You've dug your own Grave, now lie in it
by LovelyLytton
Summary: Detective Mamoru Chiba and his partner Noboru Sanjoin get called to a crime scene like no other. But the murdered pop sensation Minako Aino is only the first victim. Can they find the killer before more lives are claimed? A dark Sailor Moon AU.See rating!
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

It felt indecent to see her like this.

Sprawled on her bed, silken sheets dishevelled, golden hair tousled, red tinted lips parted for yet another kiss; she lay waiting to be discovered.

The world around her had never been this quiet.

Without making any noise, he slipped out of the door. Unnoticed, but not entirely unimportant.

***

"Is that who I think it is," Noboru blurted with disbelief in his voice as he stepped into the lavishly decorated bedroom. A myriad of candles cast a soft glow on the furniture, illuminating the four poster as if a professional had worked hours on creating the right sort of lighting. Only the wax spilling over and dripping on the carpet ruined the scene, turning it from romance to thriller. Something was wrong, and this is why they were here. The two men stepped closer, and one of their colleagues began to take pictures. All of them were painstakingly careful not to touch anything.

Taking a deep breath, Mamoru nodded. In front of them, in all her naked glory, lay the woman whose face was on posters and billboards all over the city. Minako Aino, the country's most hyped pop sensation. Not so famous for her voice as for her charming personality and her long legs, she had been the talk of the town for almost two years. Even now, she was incredibly beautiful.

The first rays of sunshine began to filter through the large windows, and caught in her golden hair, making it gleam in a way that it wasn't supposed to, at least not any more. Would she have minded to be photographed by a stranger? Mamoru wasn't so sure, and he half expected the girl to stretch her limps and rise again, were it not for the gaping hole in her chest. She was dead. Dead. Just. Like. Usagi. It took him a moment to regain his footing and he wished for something to occupy his trembling hands with. The similarity between his late wife and the murdered singer was as obvious as it was tormenting. Feeling a large hand squeeze his shoulder, he turned to find Noboru right behind him, reassuring him through his mere presence. It's what he had always done, and every since Usagi was dead and gone, Mamoru had come to rely on his partner in a way he hadn't thought possible before. Were he more emotional, he would have called him his saviour. Suppressing a shudder, he remembered the night on the bridge, the moments in which he had been so absolutely convinced that the one and only solution to all of his problems was to follow his beloved into death.

"Inspector Chiba, Inspector Sanjoin, the press has gotten wind of the murder."

Noboru's hand slid off Mamoru's shoulder as he let out a colourful curse that made the unfortunate bearer of the news blush. "We have only been here for fucking ten minutes, the girl looks as if she was alive bloody ten minutes ago, doing some wonderfully wicked things to some lucky chap and the press already knows? How?" The Constable looked apologetic, intimidated and wildly out of his comfort zone. Noboru ran his hand through his messy brown curls and continued while waving the younger man away with an air of impatience: "We will have to release a statement - not that we have much to say other than that she is dead - but we need to talk to her relatives first. Boy, do I want a drink." His brown eyes sought his partner's, fully expecting him to reprimand Noboru's early morning drinking habits, but Mamoru had left his side to inch closer to the body. Bending down, he examined her with squinted eyes. The sheets looked absolutely pristine, as if they nothing would have happened on them. Were it not for the dead girl wrapped up in them, this would not have astounded him at all. Rich people tended to have housekeepers and housekeepers were generally in the habit of keeping things clean. Still, something was amiss. It took a moment to register.

"Why isn't there any blood?"

"Huh?" Noboru had begun to blow out the candles, lest they should burn the whole place down and destroy the evidence he desperately hoped was there.

"She has a huge hole in her body, it looks as if the murderer put his fist through her chest. This bed should be drenched in blood, but it's not. Why?" Mamoru straightened his back, his mind beginning to work overtime.

The two Inspectors looked at Minako Aino, confusion etched into their features, the press momentarily forgotten.

On the small nightstand next to the bed stood two glasses of champagne, only one still bubbling.

***

"Female, aged 25, large wound in her chest. One hand-shaped bruise on her left thigh. No other marks and no signs that she fought back."

The coroner's deep voice was monotone as he spoke into his small dictaphone, and his eyes looked down at the body uncaringly. He had seen many on this table, gathered the stories of their demise from the traces left on their bodies and he had never lost his cool demeanour. He was famous for his precise and analytic mind, but it didn't make him popular with the Inspectors. Noboru didn't like the coroner, which was why he had opted to notify the victim's family instead and let Mamoru go and see this robotic man do his work. Both of them believed that it was important to see the coroner's first impression of the victim, for the information thus gained often proved valuable. He might be an unfeeling bastard, as Noboru put it, but Katsurou Hanzo could do this job like no other.

"She looks familiar."

"Popstar, very famous," Mamoru offered.

"That must be it," Katsurou answered neutrally. He was dressed in green scrubs, his chin-length silver hair tied back into a tiny ponytail.

"There was next to no blood on the bed."

"With a wound such as this one, there should be."

"There wasn't." After a customary pause, Katsurou moved away from the table and closer to Mamoru, who had to fight the urge to step away. More often than not, he felt like a child in Hanzo's presence and it wasn't a feeling he relished. Also, to use Noboru's words again, Hanzo was a bit creepy. The odd hair didn't exactly help.

"Then she might not have been killed on her bed." The coroner stood very still, his green eyes fixed on the naked girl. It was impossibly to tell what he thought right now. The silence was beginning to feel awkward, so Mamoru spoke up again. What was it that always made him feel like a boy in Hanzo's presence?

"The doorman said that she entered the penthouse early in the evening, and hasn't left it since. There is no backdoor."

"I will check whether there is any blood missing from her body."

"How do you do that?"

"Do you really want to know?" A hint of amusement was evident in the coroner's voice as he slipped on a pair of rubber gloves.

Thinking better of it, Mamoru shook his head. Under the harsh light of the halogen lamps, the dead girl looked incredibly pale. While she had still seemed so wrongfully alive in her apartment, here she was a corpse, turned into an object under the observant eyes of Hanzo. Shoving his hands deep into his pockets, Mamoru wondered if he should have followed his heart's desire to become a doctor and help the living as opposed to avenging the dead. Casting these useless thoughts aside, he looked at Minako Aino one last time.

"No, I don't suppose so. When can we expect the report?" It was time to leave. He had worked in this profession for almost ten years, but he would never get used to the sound of a ribcage being cracked open.. Seeing how Hanzo's practised hands now gripped the scalpel, the rip retractor already in reach, Mamoru knew that this most horrible of all sounds would soon resonate through the already eery room.

"Tomorrow evening, but the autopsy of the brain and the tox screen will take a little longer." With a nod, Mamoru slipped out of the doors and into the cold, fresh morning.

***

"Couldn't someone with as much money as her hire a cleaning lady", Noboru grumbled while filching through the drawers of the victim's desk. The spacious penthouse was cluttered; full of awards, photos, records, DVDs and posters. Her success was on every wall, as if she wanted to remind herself of it as often and as frequently as possible. Noboru thought it was untidy, but Mamoru didn't share this assessment. There was a pattern in the way the magazines were stacked on the floor (most of them with her face on the cover), something deliberate about the clothes draped over the white leather couch (short dresses that would cleverly expose both legs and cleavage). The only room without any pictures of herself was the bedroom, it had been a refuge from her own image. There wasn't even a mirror in there. Noboru would have expected a large mirror on the ceiling over her bed, but there was none.

"There is not a single picture of her family, and after meeting her mother, I can't say that I blame her. The woman is a dragon."

"So she wasn't sad about her only child dying?"  
"She said Minako had always been headstrong."

"Harsh."

"Yep, especially coming from her mother. She didn't even cry. It's the first time I told a mother that her daughter had been murdered without the mother shedding a tear. Nothing, mate, nothing."  
"Have you found pictures of friends?"

Opening another drawer and emptying its contents on the desk's surface, Noboru snorted.

"No. Only pictures of herself. Tons of them, actually. Maybe she was too conceited to have friends."

"Everybody has someone."

"Not true."

"Who do you know who is completely alone in this world?"

"How about our very own McCreepy?"

"I'm sure he has... people. He said we get the report tomorrow. He's very fast."

"Yeah, because he doesn't have a private life."

"Noboru..."

"What? It's true. Oh whoa," Noboru groaned, "look at this."

He motioned to Mamoru to look at the latest stack of photos he had recovered from a large manila envelope. Mamoru took them.

They were clearly paparazzi shots, showing the singer with a tall man in a darkened alley. He had his face hidden from the camera, nuzzling her neck. One hand was under the hem of her very short skirt. Aino, however, was looking straight into the lens, an indecipherable look on her pretty face.

"She knew that the pap was there," Mamoru said blankly, looking through the stack. The last one showed the man with his back to the paparazzi and Aino kneeling before him. His head was covered in wild golden curls.

"What a naughty girl."

"That gives us a motive."

"I'm not following."

"Her record company would not have been happy about this."

"So you think they killed her because of how she spent her nights? Not likely. It would have caused a huge scandal, but scandals are publicity and publicity sells records. And if you kill someone because of a business thing, you don't go and rip a hole into her body. No way, this is personal." Noboru took the pictures from his partner's hands and put them back into the envelope. "Maybe the guy found out that a paparazzi took pictures of them and killed her because she violated his trust?"  
"Or the photographer was a stalker, jealous of her lover and killed her because he couldn't have her."

"Either way, we have to find our golden-curled Adonis here," Noboru stated. He was like a dog with a bone, and Mamoru knew without a doubt that his partner would find Aino's lover. How he did it, he had no idea, but there had never been a single person that had escaped Noboru's mysterious talent.

What did escape both of them was the small secret drawer in Minako Aino's desk and the pictures within it.

***


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

"Miss Meioh, please let me say first how very sorry I am for your loss. I understand that as Miss Aino's manager, you knew her well and that you were very close, so this must be har-"

Noboru was speaking in his most soothing voice, but stopped when he saw the woman's expression. She was openly sneering at him and Noboru was dumb-founded for a minute. It was almost funny, Mamoru mused before he made a mental note that Setsuna Meioh either didn't like police men (very common), didn't like Noboru (extremely unlikely, most people flocked to him like bees to honey) or hadn't liked her boss. Assessing the manager, Mamoru would have pitted everything he owned on the last option.

"Inspector, I am a very busy women."

Slipping his role as the bad cop on like a well worn coat, Mamoru took over the questioning: "Too busy for condolences, or too busy for grieving?"

A spark lit up in her eyes as she fixed them on him in a way that was somewhere on the line between unnerving and intriguing. "Isn't that the same?"

His answer was immediate. "Not in my book."

"You are very young, aren't you?" Noboru would have sworn that her voice had taken on a sultry tone. And judging from the small smile tugging at the corner's of Mamoru's mouth, so had his partner.

"29. But experience tells me that age has nothing to do with grief and death."

"Would that be a personal or a professional assessment?"

"Both."

"Interesting."

"Erm. Miss Meioh," Noboru cut in while trying to hide his astonishment at the exchange that had just taken place, "when did you see Miss Aino last?"

Unfolding her long legs, the woman got up and retrieved a post-it filled filofax from her desk while making it abundantly clear that Noboru Sanjoin was not someone she enjoyed doing anything for. Before she flicked the filofax open, her eyes strolled yet again to his partner.

Her white finger tapped down on one margin of the filofax. "Three nights ago. She had an appearance booked for a latenight talkshow and failed to be there on time. I went to her penthouse to see what had kept her." The filofax was slammed shut again. Noboru resisted to the urge to roll his eyes. This woman was taking uncooperative to another level. Mamoru however was undeterred, and he leaned closer to the manager and asked:

"Was it unusual for Miss Aino to behave so unprofessionally?"

She mulled the question over for a minute before answering. Behind her, the walls were covered in carefully framed diplomas and golden records. Another testimony to success, Noboru noticed. So Meioh and Aino had something in common, both were either fiercely ambitious or incredibly insecure. He filed the thought away for later consideration.

"Yes and no. She was often late and if she didn't want to do something, she wouldn't. But she was excited to go on this show, seeing how a new record needs quite a lot of promotion."

"Why? Was her star sinking?" As soon as Noboru had asked the question, Setsuna spared him a pitiful look.

"This is a very competitive business, Inspector Sanjoin. There is no guarantee that you will still be in demand by next Christmas unless you make people believe that you are the most interesting person out there."  
"Do you know this man?"

Mamoru threw one of the paparazzi shots on the manager's lap. He was being very rude, but it was intentional. Also, he was quite certain that Miss Meioh here liked a good challenge.

Her reaction gave nothing away. She examined the picture closely before handing it back to Mamoru. He noticed that her long nails were painted in the shade of blood.

"No, never seen him. Not that there is a lot to see with that mop of hair. Anything else? I have an important meeting in ten minutes."

It was a dismissal if there ever was one.

* * *

The funeral was a sad affair, but not in a conventional sense. Few had come to pay their last respects to Minako Aino, for a woman as famous as she had been, it was a rather sorry turnout. Her parents were there (dry-eyed and stone-faced), her manager (checking her phone every other minute), a tall red-haired woman who looked vaguely familiar, and -Mamoru realised with a jolt- the slender form of Ami Mizuno, his late wife's best friend. It was seeing Ami that kept him from approaching Miss Meioh.

The frozen grass was hard under his feet as he walked over to the girl that had been his Usagi's voice of reason until the day she died. Behind him, Setsuna stared at a hole in his head.

"Ami."

She smiled a sad little smile when he came into her line of vision. "Mamoru, I thought you might come. How are you?"

He furrowed his brows.

"Why would you expect me here?"

His question caused a look of confusion to cross her pale face, but always giving the right answer to any given question was deeply ingrained in the former star student, so her hesitation was brief.

"Because Minako and Usagi were so close?"

"Ami, what would my wife had had to do with a popstar? That's just ridiculous." He shook his head and smiled. Above them, rain clouds slithered on the blue sky, threatening to cast the good weather away. Maybe the deities were mourning for Minako Aino, when her own family did not. Ami snuggled deeper into her black coat, and it was obvious that she was uncomfortable. At times, Mamoru had been jealous of her. She had followed her dream and worked hard to become the country's youngest surgeon. If the rumours were true, little Ami Mizuno would soon move to the States to take a coveted position in a private hospital in New York. But right now, she was standing on the frozen graveyard, saying goodbye to a friend. Her voice was soft when she spoke, full of a compassion Mamoru wasn't sure he needed or deserved.

"They went to the same tutor until Minako dropped out of school and stayed in contact until Usagi, well... until she died."

The new piece of information tried to weave its way into Mamoru's mind, but failed. It lingered on the surface, stubborn, reluctant, unplaceable.

"But... she never said so. She never mentioned her. Never."

In Ami's midnight eyes shone pity. Suddenly, it came crashing on Mamoru: how many things were there that he didn't know about the woman he had loved so dearly? Their time had been cut short, but they did have ten years together. Ten years in which Usagi had never mentioned Minako Aino.

"Mamoru, I'm sure she meant nothing by it. Usagi prob-"

"She was my wife. MY wife. She invited tons of people to our wedding. Naru, Umino, you, all of her friends from work. Why not Aino if they were as close as you claim? I'm sorry, Ami, you must be wrong." He shook his head again, feeling the cold wind on his cheeks. Aino's parents had looked over when he had raised his voice, but were now staring at the grave again. In the distance two ravens soared across the sky.

"I don't know, Mamoru, but believe me, they were friends. But I apologise, I didn't mean to upset you." Her good manners did nothing to calm him, they infuriated him even more. She had no right to mess up the precious memories of his wife, seeing how they were all he had now.

"Were you friends with Aino as well? Is that why you're here?" His tone was accusatory, and he didn't even notice it.

The young doctor swallowed, and her voice came out broken. The tears were threatening to fall from her lashes, and for a moment Mamoru wondered if she was the only one at this funeral who really missed the dead girl. It made him feel like shit.

"Yes. We weren't as close as Usagi and Minako were, but I liked her very much. Minako is-...was very lively, so much fun to be around. She came to visit me at least once a year, and we spoke on the phone every other week."

"What about?" It was easier to focus on his work than on the unexpected new of Usagi's friendship to the singer, so Mamoru shoved his conflicting emotions aside and concentrated on the conversation that had strayed off the beaten path and turned into an interrogation before either interlocutor noticed it. It was what he did best, after all. He hadn't expected Ami to deflect his question though.

"Mamoru, I'm very sorry and I don't want to be rude, but that's private. Why are you here if you didn't know her?"

His answer was almost harsh.

"I'm investigating her murder."

Ami closed her eyes and the tears fell to the ground.

It finally began to rain and the man hidden behind the large oak disappeared just as unnoticed as he had arrived. Turning up the collar of his coat, he wished that Minako Aino would still live, were it only to laugh at the irony of the situation. He was sure that she would have appreciated it.

* * *

Noboru and Mamoru had retreated into their tiny, shared office with a large thermos filled with coffee so strong that it made you wince, several sandwiches and copious newspaper cuttings about the victim.

"Okay, so she was a perfectly ordinary girl until the age of 13. Then - according to her mother, and it don't put much stock into that woman's opinion- she started to sneak out late at night, not returning until early the next morning. This went on until she was 16, and after that we have no idea what she did at night or with whom, because she moved out of her parents' house. Oh, and at some point she brought a cat back home. Her mother was furious, but Aino was unimpressed and kept it. She named it Arturo, sorry, that's wrong, the name is Artemis and according to her mother, she still had it. Did you see a trace of a cat in the penthouse because I sure as hell didn't."

Mamoru mentally retraced his steps in the penthouse and eventually shook his head. Still, he felt there was something he was overlooking with regards to the animal. "No, don't think so. Could her father tell you anything? Not about the cat, but generally."

"The usual. His little girl, always so innocent, liked by everyone, no enemies. He's genuinely upset, but then he also hasn't seen her at all this year." Noboru's voice was cutting; he didn't think much of Aino's family and it began to show. The Inspector had been more than courteous on the two times he spoken to the deceased pop star's parents, but if he had to look into Mrs. Aino self-righteous eyes one more time while she slammed her daughter, he was afraid that he would loose it. By now, Noboru Sanjoin understood perfectly why Minako Aino didn't have a single picture of her parents in her penthouse. Mamoru, who had not spoken to the Ainos in person, enquired: "Why?"

"Let's just say that family reunions were not exactly happy events, because Aino and her mother went at it like harpies. And my intuition tells me that Mr. Aino has long since given up fighting with his wife, which translates to him giving up fighting _for _hisdaughter."

Mamoru tried to pull the image of Aino's parents at her funeral from the depths of his mind, but every time he tried, he only saw the soulful blue eyes of his wife. The wife he had (contrary to popular belief) not known everything about. Usagi had kept Minako Aino a secret, but Mamoru couldn't for the life of him not figure out why. Still, he knew that he had to share this new piece of information with Noboru, it might be important.

"I spoke to Ami Mizuno at the funeral. She met Minako aged 14 through Usagi. They had the same tutor."

"Usagi knew Aino?" The open surprise in his partner's eyes didn't make Mamoru feel any better. "Yes." He looked down and examined his fingernails. They were too long, he needed to cut them. Coming to think of it, the same went for his hair.

"Did you know?"

"No."

"Shit."

Mamoru slouched a little deeper in his chair and avoided looking at his partner. Instead, he took a survey of their office. At some point, they would really have to tidy up. The other Inspectors had already wondered where all the communal coffee mugs had gone to.

After a brief silence, Noboru scratched his nose and asked: "Could Ami identify the man in the picture?" There were moments when Mamoru felt like kissing the older man. _Well, maybe not kissing, but rather embracing._Where others would have asked about how he could have not known that his wife was friends with one of Japan's best selling singers, Noboru focused on the case.

"No, but she told me that Aino had always been very enthusiastic about boys. She knew of no significant relationships, only crushes." What Mamoru didn't mention was how shocked Ami had been. He hadn't been able to tell whether it was the fact that Minako did have a lover or whether it had been the fact that she had been photographed with him.

"What about one-night stands? Affairs?"

"Ami was a bit evasive, she felt she was betraying her trust and so on-"

"She's dead as a doornail, there's nothing left to betray." That was typical of Noboru, he was often blunt bordering on crude. He meant no harm by it, and was usually able to display an astounding amount of tact when dealing with a victim's relatives, but he didn't watch his tongue when talking to his partner.

"Is that really what you think? That loyalty ends at the grave?" Blue eyes met brown ones.

"Professionally: yes. Personally: no."

"Thought so."

"So what did she tell you?"

"That Minako had mentioned some guy -no name though- in their last conversation. She said that he meant something."

"He meant something? Strange way to say you have the hots for someone."

"That's what Ami thought, too. It's why she was so certain that Aino said just that: he meant something. Not he meant something to her, or she loved him, no, just that he meant something. Other than that, no information about relationships. For all Ami knows, Minako Aino might have been a nun."

"Nuns don't go down on random men in dark alleys, knowing full well that they are being photographed."

"I think we have to question the manager again."

Noboru snorted.

"She thinks you're hot. I'm annoying, but you're hot. Not that it matters because she's a scary woman. God, I need to get laid again." Noboru put his head on the desk in a theatrical manner.

"Meioh is not scary, she is strong. And I agree, you really do need a good lay." Mamoru grinned and busied himself with the first cutting. Noboru threw a paper aeroplane in his general direction.

After a moment's silence, Noboru leaned forward on his desk and fixed Mamoru with an interested look, a bit like a five year old would inspect an unexpectedly large insect.

"So you found her attractive?"

"You didn't?"

"Not my type, Mamoru. She's mean. I like 'em sweet." The corners of Noboru's mouth turned upwards, undoubtedly in honour of a former girlfriend. He changed them every three to four months, for some reason long term commitment didn't sit well with Noboru Sanjoin. He had dated Usagi's friend Naru for a little while, but the results had been disastrous. The last time Naru had seen him, she had dumped a mug of steaming hot coffee on his chestnut curls. The memory alone cheered Mamoru up, and he teased his partner with glee.

"And by that you mean easy."

"If I didn't know you so well, I'd be offended now. When I say sweet, I mean pretty, funny and if they can cook, even better. Which brings me to these sandwiches: they suck. Didn't I tell you fifteen times that you should go to the little place around the corner to get our food and not to the cafeteria?"

"How about you go next time?"

"Sorry, can't, I have to flirt with Takayaki's secretary while you're gone."

"Miss Oko is at least 67."

"So?"

"If you don't know what's wrong with that, I'm not going to explain it to you."

"Well, Miss Oko has a granddaughter who used to be a huge Minako Aino fan. So Miss Oko has been collecting newspaper cuttings about her to give them to the kiddo." Grinning, Noboru jabbed the stack of cuttings in front of Mamoru, causing the first three to slide off and down on the floor.

"Did you use Miss Oko to avoid doing your own research?"

"Yes."

"Hmm, well done. I hate filching through archives."

"See, I told you so. Behind your goody-two-shoes attitude hides a very lazy man."

A knock on the door interrupted their banter and Noboru flashed his partner a devious grin before yelling: "Come in!"

Growing up in a house full of family had that effect on you - always being a little louder than necessary. Mamoru winced.

The door opened and Katsurou Hanzo stepped in. He was carrying a black umbrella in one, and the report in the other hand.

"You have a problem."

*** End of Chapter Two ***


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

**

* * *

**

Mamoru pressed his forehead against the cool glass of his bedroom window. The nightmare still had a hold over him, and he felt bile rising in his throat. He just about made it to the toilet before he was violently sick.  
Images of two women - one golden, one silver - had haunted him all night long. Both of them were dying on a battlefield, with their hearts missing. But it wasn't the blood or the gore, it was the loneliness that got to him. The loneliness and the heat. The two women had been alone amidst all those faceless people, and their light had slowly diminished until everything was dark around them. It was then that he had woken up, sweat on his skin and tears in his eyes.

Sleep had never been easy for him; until he had met Usagi, his nights were filled with memories of his parents dying in that horrific car crash only he had survived. And after Usagi, it was her demise that crept up on time and again.  
Everyone had tried to assure him that she hadn't even noticed that the house was burning, she had died from carbon monoxide poisoning in her sleep before the flames ever got to her. Despite all the kind words, the doubts had remained with him, were his constant companion. Mamoru wished that he could believe his colleagues, but he had altered the truth for the sake of a victim's family so often that he knew how practised these lies were after a while. He couldn't even bury his wife, because when the house had burnt to the ground, it had taken all her remains with it. The firemen had never been able to tell where the fire had started, they reckoned Usagi forgot to blow a candle out before going to bed. What still irked Mamoru about this assumption was not the notion of his wife's absent-mindedness, but that Usagi wasn't all that fond of candles to begin with. She barely ever lit any, and preferred funny lamps she collected on flea markets instead. A fond smile crept up on his face as he remembered the atrocious Hello Kitty lamp she had brought home one day. Usagi had beamed as she put it on their nightstand, and her smile had lit up the room more than any electrical light ever could. God, how he missed her...

Mamoru returned to his bed despite knowing that he wouldn't fall asleep again. In this black night, he was just as alone as the two women from his dream.

A whisper caressed his ears, and Noboru woke up to find himself alone in his bedroom. Groaning, he got up and looked out of the window. The night was still dark, but he decided to stay awake anyway. The stars were too bright, and so was the moon. I should really get blinds one day, he thought as he dragged himself into his narrow kitchen. After turning the coffee machine on, Noboru sat down at his computer and began to read through the wikipedia entry on Minako Aino. It wasn't as if he had never read it before, but he needed something to occupy himself with. And the internet was always a good starting point. He began to click through several pages until he finally stumbled over something unexpected. Interesting.

Every once in a while he looked at the wooden clock he had hammered on his wall after a thoroughly frustrating trip to IKEA with an ex-girlfriend. He couldn't exactly remember whether it had been Naru or Saika, but what did it matter now? As soon as the small plastic hand moved to five, he picked up his phone and dialled. Mamoru answered on the first ring.  
"Yes?"  
"You awake?"  
"Didn't sleep much."  
"Me neither. Let's meet in the office in an hour."  
"Okay."  
They put the phone down simultaneously. After years of working together, they didn't need many words. When they had been partnered together, Mamoru was a rookie straight from the academy, but the bugger carried himself with the air of a natural leader, Noboru remembered fondly. Noboru himself had worked as a Inspector for three years already, and his old partner had just retired, which was a good thing because he would have strangled the old man otherwise. To say that they hadn't gotten along was the understatement of the century.  
It wasn't long before Mamoru introduced him to his young wife; they had gotten married as soon as she finished high school and were now living together in a small house Mamoru had bought from the remains of his inheritance. They didn't have much money, but Noboru preferred a dinner at the Chibas to any chic restaurant in the city. He felt instantly at home with them and his partner seemed like a completely different man when his wife was around. Usagi made him happier, younger. With her death, everything had changed. Noboru couldn't explain it well, but Mamoru was a different man now. As if his heart had been ripped out, too...

Noboru shook his head and went to take a cold shower; sometimes it was all he could do to banish the dark thoughts that popped up his head as if they belonged. He had less than an hour to turn himself into the bubbly partner Mamoru needed him to be. One shower and three espressos later, he was almost there.

* * *

"I found him." Noboru was giddy with excitement, he was pacing up and down, not a small feat considering how tiny their office and how large Noboru was. His hair was a bit wilder than usual today, and Mamoru strongly suspected that this was due to how often Noboru ran his hands through it when he was thinking.  
"The lover?" Mamoru sat a little straighter in his rickety chair. It creaked ominously.  
"No, the photographer. His name is Hisaya Nigoshi, and he works for the country's main paparazzi agency. Young fellow, about 23. He used to follow Aino everywhere, got the best pictures, meaning all the ones she would have rather not seen in print and then all of a sudden, he stopped and refused to take on any further assignments that had even remotely to do with her. I called him before I drove here, and we will meet him in two hours for coffee. And he may even be able to identify our mystery man."  
Mamoru shook his head at his partner's cheek. Calling a possible witness at five thirty in the morning? There was also something wrong with his partner's logic and he voiced his doubt without hesitation.  
"Noboru, you're not making any sense. If he stopped taking pictures of Aino, then how can you be so sure that it's him?"  
"Paps do their job for the money and money alone. Snapping upskirts of Aino was lucrative, so why should he stop unless he came to get to know her personally? And why do you think these paparazzi pics of her going down on mystery man never surfaced? They are worth more than your car, my car and both of our flats together. Also, when I rang him and asked him about those pictures, he immediately knew what I was talking about and all but confirmed that it was him who took them."

Taking a sip from his dirty mug (they still hadn't gotten round to cleaning the place), Mamoru read through a memo.  
"The forensic people found several strands of hair in different places. Long black and short blonde. Couldn't say whose it was though. Not Aino's, that's for sure. Also a few fingerprints, but none in the database."  
"Your fan has long black hair. And Aino's lover's hair is short and blonde. Curly though."  
"My fan? You're exaggerating. But we will get her to submit a sample. Not that a positive result would carry much meaning, we already know that she was there at some point. She told us so herself."  
"She might have been there to burn a hole into Aino's chest and then rip her heart out."  
The coroner's report had been very precise: he was able to pinpoint the victim's death to three o'clock at night, give or take five minutes and she must have died the minute her beating heart was ripped from her body. The unconventional and haunting piece of information was that the murderer had not cut her open, but burnt a hole into her chest. Which also explained the missing blood: it had vaporised. The scorch marks did not leave room for any other interpretation and it scared both the Inspectors. Who did such a thing? Katsurou Hanzo had not been able to say what had been used as a weapon, but he assumed that it had been a laser. Nothing else could generate enough heat, but then with a laser, the wounds should have been clear cut and not as messy as they were. So the bottom line was that they didn't even know which sort of murder weapon to look for.

Thankfully, Aino's eyes had been closed, when they had found her.  
Mamoru was certain that he couldn't stand to see the expression in them were they not. She had to have been in incredible pain, but why didn't she fight back? There was only one sensible answer: she had known her murderer and trusted him until it was too late. It also meant that her death had at least been a quick one. Deep down, he knew that Setsuna Meioh was a suspect, but he didn't want to believe it. She was the first woman he had really looked at since Usagi died, she couldn't have perpetrated a crime as atrocious as this one. It was obvious that she hadn't cared much for her employer, but that didn't make her a murderer. Lots of people hated their boss, Noboru himself wasn't overly fond of their Chief Inspector. He steeled himself and spoke up.  
"You don't seriously think that Setsuna Meioh is our murderer. There is no motive, Aino was her main source of income."  
Noboru shrugged and cast his partner a knowing look. It said quite clearly: You just want her to be innocent because she wants you. Fucker.  
Frustrated, Mamoru opened another folder with newspaper cuttings and delved into the adventure that had been Minako Aino's life. Sometimes he really wished that Noboru couldn't read him this well.

* * *

They spotted him as soon as they entered the café. He was slouched in a corner booth, a red notebook beside him. His hair ( shoulder length golden curls, Mamoru noticed with a jolt) was a mess, and he had dark circles under his closed eyes. His skin looked as if he hadn't eaten in the days. The coffee in front of him was untouched.  
When they stepped closer to the table, he looked up and Noboru noticed that the photographer's hands were trembling. He was a very nervous man, clearly afraid of something.

"Mr. Nigoshi, I'm Inspector Sanjoin, we spoke on the phone. This is my partner, Inspector Chiba. Can we take a seat?"  
A weak nod invited them to the table, and a waitress appeared out of nowhere to take their orders. Mamoru ordered some much needed coffee, but food would have to wait until later; he and Noboru didn't eat as a rule while they were interviewing witnesses. Not that he was entirely sure that Hisaya Nigoshi was a witness, the trembling man in front of him might also be a suspect. One thing however was sure: he was not Aino's lover, his build was too slight to match the man in the picture.  
The second the waitress had left, Hisaya blurted out: "It wasn't me. I swear, it wasn't me."  
"I didn't think it was," Noboru said calmly. "Did you take these pictures?" He dropped the raunchy pile on the table and Hisaya reached out to touch them, but thought better of it and retracted his hands. The two Inspectors had been in a heated argument before they had left their office; Noboru was convinced that Hisaya was innocent, a valuable witness. Mamoru felt that it was far too early in the investigation to make any assumptions about people's innocence. Especially if they were complete strangers to you.  
"Yes."  
"When?"  
"Erm, about three months ago. It was the last assignment I did on her."  
"Why was it the last one? I understand that these sort of pictures are very valuable." Fearful green eyes implored Noboru to understand.  
"She saw me, she saw me with my camera right there, but she didn't leave, she didn't stop. She called me a few days later to ask when I would release the pictures - God knows how she got my number - and I told her that I wouldn't. And ever since then, we struck up some sort of friendsh-, well no, not friendship, but an acquaintance. Meeting for coffee, that sort of thing."

The photographer reached for a pack of cigarettes and lit one. It didn't succeed in making him calmer, but at least it gave him something to occupy his hands with. Noboru fought the urge to reach out and touch the man's shoulder in a gesture of compassion. He seemed so young, so vulnerable. But he had come here as a Inspector, not as a private person, so he pressed on.  
"Were you ever to her penthouse?" It was a loaded question: if Hisaya Nigoshi said no, and the blonde hair the forensic people found matched his DNA, he was done for. The photographer gulped.  
"Several times." The Inspectors glanced at each other before Noboru continued the questioning. Mamoru leaned forward and observed. They were close.  
"Can you identify this man?" Noboru pointed to the man in the pictures and the atmosphere tensed.  
Hisaya nodded. "Yes, I can. His name is Kaitou Ace, Minako stopped seeing him a few weeks after she caught me photographing the two of them together."  
"Was he upset?"  
"Very much so, he was fucking raging. He went completely mental, came to her penthouse and hammered on the door for hours." Hisaya took a deep drag on his cigarette and stared at the wall behind Noboru's head. Several paintings adorned it, all of the cheap variety that you could buy in packs.  
"Did Miss Aino tell you that?" His eyes snapped back to Noboru.  
"Yes. She thought it was funny. She did have a bit of a cruel streak, as far as I can tell she didn't invest into relationships emotionally. It seemed that Ace didn't catch on until it was too late."  
"Do you know where we can find him?" It was the first time that Mamoru had spoken, and Noboru frowned. He would have saved this question for much later, but his partner was growing impatient.  
Hisaya shook his head.  
"Look, I'm sorry, but I have no idea where he lives. I don't even know what he's doing for a living, and I don't think Minako knew that, either. From what she told me, they didn't talk much."  
Distaste flashed in Mamoru's features. He had much preferred Ami's reluctance when it came to talking about Aino's love life. Some things deserved to be protected, but Hisaya Nigoshi seemed more than ready to spill the beans, which didn't come as a surprise given his profession. Something in his eyes told Mamoru that the photographer enjoyed this sort of gossip; he relished it.

They left the café in silence and didn't speak until they reached their car. Noboru took the driver's seat.  
"If you ask me, he's our man," Mamoru said as soon as they slammed their respective doors shut.  
Staring straight ahead, Noboru started the engine and manoeuvred their car out of the parking space. He didn't answer, but bit down on his bottom lip instead. He always did that when he was succumbing to a state of aggravation, but Mamoru felt that they were in a critical phase in their investigation, so they didn't have the time to wait until Noboru got over his bitch mood.  
"He admitted that he had been to the penthouse, he was the reason why she and her boyfriend broke up and he looks like a haunted man. And why should have a popstar befriended a paparazzi? He made it sound like it was her that wanted to keep in touch, not him. Doesn't make any sense. He's guilty. And what's up with that flashy notebook he carries around with him? Did you notice how nervous he got when I looked at it?"  
"Mamoru, I'm driving."  
"We've been partners for five years, it would be news to me that you couldn't drive and listen at the same time."  
"Shut up, there's ice on the road."  
"We have our man."  
"You only want him to be our man because you want Setsuna Meioh to be innocent. Turn on the heater, it's fucking freezing in here."  
"Why do I care if Meioh is guilty?"  
"Don't play dumb with me."  
"Forget Meioh. Hisaya Nigoshi is Aino's murderer. Why do you care so much about that man? It's not like you to get this involved."  
Noboru ignored the question and focused on the traffic, letting the conversation die then and there on the iced roads leading to the still deserted city centre.

* * *

Hisaya Nigoshi hadn't had much luck in the past weeks, his days as a golden boy were obviously over. The doorman of Minako Aino's building had testified that he had seen him leave the building in the night of the murder at about 3.30 am. Mamoru had been jubilant and went in for an endless and hard interrogation that left the photographer in tears. However, he stuck to the story that he had only entered the penthouse after Aino had already been dead. He claimed to have been too afraid to call the police. When Mamoru asked him why he hadn't told them that when they had met in the café, Hisaya had given him a look of such contempt that it cut through most of Mamoru's defences.  
"Because you had it in for me the minute you walked through that door."  
Even Mamoru had to admit that this was true.

The prosecutor issued a detention order, and the bars closed behind Hisaya.  
Noboru smashed every single coffee mug in their office when he heard the news, unwilling to believe the younger man's guilt. He couldn't explain why he cared so much, but he did.

* * *

The Inspectors were sitting in their office in what could only be described as sullen silence, one trying to find further evidence for Nigoshi's guilt, the other one desperately looking for proof on the man's innocence. It was Hisaya's third day in prison and some subtle enquiring had led Noboru to believe that the young man would not last the week. He was simply too pretty.  
Their phone began to ring (they had put it on the floor to have more room on their adjoining desks for paperwork) and Noboru gave it a kick that propelled it into Mamoru's direction.  
"You're behaving like a child."  
"Fuck you."  
After shooting his colleague a dark look, Mamoru picked the receiver up.  
"Inspector Chiba."  
When Noboru heard the sound of a pen scratching on paper, he looked up. Mamoru was writing down an address, and slammed the receiver down.  
"There is another one."  
Both men jumped up, grabbing their coats as they went. They arrived at the crime scene fifteen minutes later, and only after he walked through the doors, did Mamoru notice whose house he had just entered.

* * *

**End of Chapter Three.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

**

* * *

**

Another dead girl on a bed, but she looked nothing like Minako Aino in her final minutes.  
Sweet, innocent Ami Mizuno.  
In a bid to keep his head clear, Noboru began to compile a list of differences between the two crime scenes.  
For one, Ami was dressed. She wore a blue-striped silk pyjama, reading glasses and a look of shock etched into her face. Her apartment was pristine, only a shattered tea cup next to her nightstand disrupted the order. The fireplace was glowing brightly, telling tales of a young woman living alone who had followed all her nightly rituals and had been interrupted by her murderer. Next to her dead body rested the book she had been reading. Sweet, innocent Ami Mizuno had read Harry Potter. They copy was well used, the spine glued back togethr. She must have devoured it religiously, and now it would never be read again. It was this detail that tore through the haze that had engulfed Mamoru like a blanket. He had expected all of Ami's books to look as if they came fresh from the printers. To see one that had obviously been read, tossed in a bag, and probably fallen into a bathtub at some point, made it all real. The haze disappeared, and the dead girl remained. Mamoru felt like screaming, but bit down on his bottom lip until he could taste blood instead.

"It's the same wound."  
Words were hard to come by, so he just nodded and left the talking to his partner.  
"I think we have a serial killer on our hands."  
Shoving his trembling hands deep into his pockets, Mamoru tried to reconcile the image of the living Ami Mizuno with the girl lying on the pressed cotton sheets. It was impossible.  
Noboru pressed on, his voice suddenly sharp. In the two days since the arrest, the two men had barely spoken. It was clear that Noboru felt betrayed because Mamoru had gone to the prosecutor behind his partner's back, and even more so when he went to their Chief Inspector to complain about it and he had told him in no uncertain terms that Mamoru had made it sound as if the decision had been made on both of their accounts.  
"And since Hisaya Nigoshi is still in prison, I don't think he is our man, after all." He sought Mamoru's eyes.

It took Noboru a minute to realise his mistake. This wasn't the time for hurt pride or accusations; Mamoru had known Ami Mizuno, had even been friends with her when Usagi was still alive. Embarrassed, Noboru shuffled his large feet and damned himself to hell and back for his insensitivity. Noboru cast his eyes to the floor. "Sorry, mate."  
But the damage was done, the apology not enough and Mamoru Chiba just walked out of the room without sparing his partner another glance to find a moment of quiet to grieve for the girl that had played the piano on his wedding day.

* * *

There were two reactions to opening your front door and finding yourself face to face with two police men.  
There was either a nervous smile or immediate tears.

Mrs. Mizuno began to cry even before they had gotten the chance to introduce themselves.  
Parents tended to do that, not because they were generally in fear for their children, but because they had a hell of a good intuition.  
Ami Mizuno had been an only child, and much loved by her mother.

Mamoru saw the older woman breaking down in front of him, shattering the last shreds of his belief in humanity into a thousand little pieces. It reminded him horribly of the day he had to tell Usagi's parents that their daughter had died in a fire. Ikuko Tsukino had screamed and cried until her throat was raw and her eyes held no more tears. He was only here out of respect for Ami; it was normally Noboru's job to speak to the victim's family. Noboru had once said that he had never lost someone dear to him, so delivering bad news didn't affect him as much. It was easier to keep an emotional distance, he claimed with a shrug. More than once, Mamoru had wondered if this was actually the truth. There was a well hidden melancholy about Noboru, something you could only spot when the taller man deemed himself to be alone, unwatched and unsupervised. It occasionally lingered in his eyes, hovered on his lips, danced on his face. You needed to know it was there to spot it, but the last year had turned Mamoru into an excellent observer. If your wife died unexpectly, you either developed complete obliviousness to all of your surroundings, or you suddenly saw things in a different, albeit gloomier light.

As he held Mrs. Mizuno like a lost child, Mamoru looked at her walls and the countless pictures of the small, but undoubtedly happy family and wondered what Usagi would have had to say about her husband investigating the murder of not one, but two of her friends.

* * *

"Miss Meioh, do you know this girl?"  
The picture had been taken at a charity function and showed Ami Mizuno in a peach coloured cocktail dress. The girl clutched a programme in her hands, as it were a lifeline. Ami had obviously not enjoyed the event very much, but still made an effort to smile for the camera. Her mother had raised her well.  
"Hmm, can't say that I do. Why?"  
"I'm the one with the badge, which means that I'm the one asking questions."  
"In that case, Inspector Sanjoin, please do continue." The sarcasm was so strong that it seemed to drip from Setsuna Meioh's words right on the expensive carpet. As most decorative objects in the office, it was of a deep red colour.  
Bitch, Noboru thought emphatically. That woman was so used to things going her way, it irritated the living daylight out of him. He briefly wondered how she and Aino had gotten along. Noboru remembered how Aino's mother had told him story after story about her daughter's impossible stubbornness.  
"Are you sure you haven't seen her? Because she was at Minako Aino's funeral and according to my partner, so were you."  
"You didn't ask whether I have seen her, you just asked me whether or not I know her. And I don't." The statement was followed by an ironic little smile, and for the first time Noboru wished that he could get away with beating suspects into a bloody pulp.  
"She was friends with your boss."  
"Minako's private life was of little importance to me." This time the forensic people had found nothing, not even a smidgen of skin. If Setsuna Meioh had been to Ami Mizuno's house, they couldn't prove it.  
"What about this girl?"  
Were Mamoru ever to find out that he was showing Usagi's picture around, he would throw a fit. There were few things Noboru had never told his partner, but the fact that he had always doubted that Usagi Chiba's death had been an accident was one of them. Usagi was clumsy, but not clumsy enough to accidentally burn her house to the ground while being in it. Now two friends of the young woman were dead, both killed in the middle of the night, around the same time the Chibas' house with Usagi in it had burnt down. Noboru was quite sure that Mamoru had not yet caught on to the almost identical times of death, and as of now, he had no intention of alerting him to it. There was a connection between the death of Usagi and that of her friends, Noboru felt it in his bones.

But there was also another reason why Noboru had opted to interrogate Setsuna Meioh on his own: he feared that Mamoru and Meioh would continue this strange flirtatious dance, and that was something Noboru wasn't interested in seeing. While he was happy to see that his friend displayed an interest into women again, he wished he would choose someone who was a little bit nicer. Someone who could make him happy, like Usagi had been able to. The woman sitting in front of him was not made for happiness, she was all business and no fun.

When Setsuna gingerly took the picture from his hands, Noboru suddenly felt himself growing cold. Her expression changed into one that was almost tender. On her sardonic face, it was scary. His heartbeat sped up as he waited for her answer.  
"Yes, I know her. Her name is Bunny, she visited Minako quite often. She came to recordings, shootings, that sort of thing. I don't know how often she met Minako outside of work, but I dare say they spend a lot of time together. Sweet girl, I like her. Enormous appetite." Setsuna chuckled. "She hasn't been around for some time, I did wonder if she and Minako had a falling out. But then they always got on like a house on fire." Noboru felt the air leave his lungs, but either he covered his distress very well or Setsuna was oblivious. She smoothed her hair, looked at the photo one more time and then handed it back to him. "How is she?"

Present tense. Goosebumps prickled on Noboru's skin. He would have accused Setsuna Meioh of lying in an instant, but not on this matter. The manager had no idea that Usagi had been dead for well over a year. He forced himself to speak.  
"When did you last see her?"  
"I don't remember, must have been some time ago."  
"Can you check?" The urgency in his voice caused her to drop her reluctance and she moved.

She got up, went to her desk, opened a small drawer and flicked through an old diary of hers. When she finally named a date, Noboru closed his eyes and prayed for the first time since his grandmother died.

* * *

At the same time, Mamoru went to visit Hisaya Nigoshi in his cell. The image of Ami's lifeless body took all the pleasure from seeing the photographer behind bars. Instead, he felt his temper rise.  
"Who is your accomplice? Why Ami Mizuno? WHY?"

"I- wait, what? I don't have an accomplice, I'm innocent! I don't even know who Ami Mizuno is!"  
"LIAR," roared Mamoru. His voice resonated in the narrow cell, bouncing of the walls in an echo of untamed rage.  
"So someone else died? But see, I was in here, it couldn't have been me, I'm innocent! I swear!"

Mamoru changed the topic. He couldn't leave Nigoshi with time to think, he needed to outsmart him and trick him into showing his true colours. Noboru seemed to think that the younger man was as innocent as a schoolboy, but Mamoru didn't think so. He knew better.  
"What reason would Aino have to seek your company? You followed her, you harassed her!" After a minute, Mamoru took a step closer to the prisoner. His voice turned low, dangerous. For a brief moment, Hisaya wished he would shout again.  
"Did you fuck her? Did you blackmail her into being with you? I reckon those pictures you took proved to be some very good leverage against her. You're a piece of dirt, Nigoshi, and you know it."  
And then there it was, right there in his eyes, precisely what Mamoru had been waiting for. The look of fear had left Hisaya's face and was replaced by one of cold fury. Mamoru had seen this look on many men, it was the look of a man who knew what murder felt like. Hisaya mimicked Mamoru's earlier movement and closed the distance between the two of them. They were almost nose to nose, and the cell's temperature seemed to rise.  
"I never touched her, not in this lifetime and not in any other. Even if I had been interested, which, for the record, I'm not, I wouldn't have dared to touch her. I'm not suicidal." A bitter laugh escaped the blonde man and he fell silent. Mamoru missed the brief flicker of confusion in Hisaya's eyes, as if the words he had spoken had not made any sense. But the young man was quick on his feet and continued, brushing over his puzzlement in a heartbeat. "And whether I'm a piece of dirt or not is not up to you to judge because as far as these murders are concerned, I'm innocent. And now you better get out of here or you get my lawyer in."  
"Are you threatening me?"  
"We both know you're not supposed to question me unless there is a lawyer in this room and believe me, I won't hesitate for one second to file a complaint against you."  
"I know a murderer when I see one."  
Hisaya laughed. "Congratulations. Then all you need to do is find some solid proof and since I haven't killed Minako, that won't happen."  
"We'll see about that."  
Mamoru turned and left, hearing the doors slide shut behind him. He wished he could have slammed them.

When he got home that night, his answering machine blinked.  
"Inspector Chiba, this is Setsuna Meioh. I wanted to tell you that I'm very sorry for your loss, I only heard about it today. I realise the circumstances are less than ideal, but there is no time like the present and if you are free, I would love to have dinner with you sometime. You know how to contact me."  
Looking at the dark sky and the full moon, Mamoru hesitated for a minute before dialling.

There was nothing tender about their coming together. He had her undressed before they had even reached her bedroom, and she egged him on in that low, dark voice of hers. Setsuna's lipstick was all over his collar, and she made sure that his clothes joined hers on the floors not long after. Her olive skin glinted in the moonlight, and her brown eyes gleamed crimson. She was a thing of beauty, a thing of the night. She was just as wrong as she was beautiful, and Mamoru loved it. For the first time in ages, he felt free. He slid the condom on and threw her on the bed. She laughed and beckoned him to follow her, and when he did, her slender arms encircled him and pressed him deep inside. Time and time again, her long fingernails drew blood on his back, and Mamoru revelled in the pain until the sun rose.

* * *

**End of Chapter Four.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

**

* * *

**

A man was leaning against the shop windows of a closed café. The day was young, and the sun had not yet replaced the moon on the horizon. A few birds were twittering in the bare trees adorning the street, and in the distance the rubbish collection was on its early round. The man was waiting, he had enough time. His face showed a light stubble and his shoulder-length blonde hair was half hidden under a baseball cap, not as carefully groomed as it normally was, but several days in prison did that to you. He held a red notebook in one hand, and a cigarette in the other. The one he had been waiting for arrived a little while after six.

"Thank you. I know they wouldn't have let me go so soon if you hadn't spoken up for me."  
Noboru shrugged. "You're innocent, we both know that. I just did my job." His voice held little warmth, and it was clear that he would rather not be here. Hisaya Nigoshi had called him on his mobile phone just before they released him, and the only reason Noboru had followed the invitation was because he was curious what the younger man wanted from him. As it appeared, he just wanted to deliver a heartfelt thank you. Not that Noboru cared about that, he had other things on his mind. Including but not limited to two dead young women, a disgruntled Mamoru and several journalists who rarely left the police station in the vain hope of learning some sordid detail about the killings.  
Hisaya snorted. "You don't like me much, do you?" The paparazzi's voice interrupted his train of thoughts, and Noboru sighed.  
"That's not it. I don't know you, do I?" What was intended as a rhetoric question suddenly held more gravitas than it was supposed to. Noboru furrowed his brows. What about the question had sounded so strange in retrospect? And suddenly he noticed something else: something about the young man had changed since he had seen him last. When they had met at the café, Hisaya was a haunted man: insecure, nervous, restless. But the man he was faced with now was perfectly at ease, despite having spent time in a tiny cell with an irate Mamoru. So where on earth had all this confidence come from?

The two men looked at each as some birds shot up into the lightening sky.  
"Nigoshi, have we met before? DoI know you?" A sharp wind brushed past them, and Noboru shuddered involuntarily. Spring was still far away.  
Hisaya peered out from under the brim of his cap, leaving only his curled lips visible, while his eyes were thrown in the shadow. He smiled darkly, and it reminded Noah of a TV programme about sharks he had once seen. This was the time to stop paddling and hope that the beast would pass you by.  
"Not any more."

Acting on instinct, Noboru turned on the spot and walked away, setting a pace that was too slow for the rapid beating of his heart. He fumbled in his pocket for his mobile and dialled Mamoru's number with trembling fingers, reluctantly admitting to himself that he had never met someone who could unsettle him as easily as the slight photographer did.

Something made him turn and look back over his shoulder one last time. Hisaya was watching him go.

* * *

When Mamoru entered their office at 7.30, Noboru was already there and busy putting pictures up on a large board. The bluetack didn't seem to stick right, so he slapped the photographs on the board with a little more force than necessary.  
"Easy there."  
"Shut it."  
"Bad night?"  
"More like bad morning. Did you bring food?"  
Shaking his head, Mamoru threw two wrapped sandwiches on Noboru's desk. They bore a pink crest, signature of the small place around the corner Noboru preferred to their local caféteria.  
"There you are. But just so you know, one day you will be a very fat man. You eat way too much." Not so deeply hidden in Mamoru was still the boy who wanted to be a doctor, and because of that he made a point to live a healthy life style. Noboru on the other hand had more than once claimed that Jack Nicholson was his idol in terms of debauchery and living choices. Who needed low fat salat dressing when you could have a steak?  
"Okay Chiba, what have you done?" Noboru had abadoned his project and focused his attention on his partner. His face showed just as much scutiny as curiosity, which resulted in a strange mix of furrowed brows and uplifted lips.  
"Excuse me?"  
"Mamoru, I keep telling you to go the small sandwich place, and yet you never do. Is this because of Nigoshi? Because frankly, that's not necessary. Just don't go to the Chief over my head again, okay? By the way, he's no longer in prison, he was released earlier this morning."  
Mamoru looked stunned and nodded. Before he got a chance to answer, Noboru continued.  
"And don't look at me like that, I'm an Inspector, have been one for longer than you're even on the job. I deduce, it's what pays my bills. Guilty look plus proper sandwiches equals you being ashamed of something. But it's okay, mate, it's okay." A friendly pat on the shoulder emphasised the sentiment, and Noboru began to unwrap one of the sandwiches.  
In attempt to hide the blush that was creeping on his face, Mamoru took the two steps to the board (because in their office, nothing was ever more than two steps away) and turned his back on his partner. Noboru was right, he did feel guilty, but it had nothing to do with Hisaya Nigoshi and everything with Setsuna Meioh.  
"You're looking for similarities in the crime scenes?"  
"Yeah. Look at the pictures of the victims: Aino looked relaxed, Ami looked shocked. Why?"  
"Ami is... was very smart. She might have figured out that the person who appeared in her bedroom was up to no good whereas Aino might have thought that it was just her lover." Mamoru plucked the picture of Ami's bedroom from the board and and brought it closer to his eyes. "What about the tea?"  
"Huh?"  
"Ami had a cup of tea next to her bed. And look here, two glasses of champagne on Aino's nighstand. One full, the other showing some red liptstick and missing about a quarter. What did Aino's tox reprt say? Any sedatives?"  
"Let me check." Noboru reached for a thin folder that held Katsurou Hanzo's report. "Tox screen isn't there yet. Can you call Hanzo and ask?"  
"What is your problem with the man? Seriously." Mamoru put the pictures back up, and crossed his arms.  
"The hair. It's shinier than mine. Now can you call him and ask or not?"  
"You have food, you should be happy. What's wrong with you?" Glad to have found something to distract Noboru with, Mamoru sat down. His chair gave an onimous creak as he settled himself in a more or less comfortable position. Noboru just kept eating his sandwich, spilling some mayonaise on his red lumberjack shirt. "Nothing."  
"Fine, be cranky."  
"I'm not cranky, I just had a bad morning. And now let me eat in peace and call McCreepy."

But one call down to the morgue revealed that Katsurou Hanzo had called in sick for the day.

They were looking through Ami Mizuno's living room when the call reached them. Once again, they rushed to a new crime scene while not having spent enough time on the old one. It was beginning to turn into a wearisome routine, as if the murderer was planning to confuse them by putting more and more work on their desks. While there had been over a year between Usagi's and Minako's deaths, Ami had followed the singer after only five days and now there was another victim. The files were already piling up, and they were no closer to solving the case than they had been on day one. And the fact that only one of the two Inspectors was looking at three murders didn't make it much easier. Noboru had not yet found the right moment to tell Mamoru what he had found out while speaking to Setsuna Meioh.

As soon as they crossed the threshold, they knew what they would find inside the house. The smell gave it all away. Whoever had died in here, had been dead for a while.  
The Inspectors moved slowly, dreading what awaited them. Seeing dead people was nothing you got used to, but if they had been dead for longer than three days, it made things even harder.  
Again, it was a bedroom that their colleagues pointed them to. Again, it was a girl with a hole in her chest. What was different this time was that she had been dead for at least a month, and that she had fought. The scorch marks were all over her rotting flesh, and her agony was etched into the walls. Several vases with rotten and singed flowers adorned the few untouched surfaces. Looking down, Noboru noticed he was standing on shards.  
Mamoru's voice was dark. "I think we will have to go by dental records. Even if we find her family, we can't ask them to identify her. Not like this." Mamoru was trying to hold himself together, to work, to function, but Noboru knew that despite his partner's attempt at behaving like a cop and not a man, he was deeply unsettled. He hadn't recovered from Ami Mizuno's murder, in fact Noboru had wondered more than once if Mamoru shouldn't better take a long vacation and return once the case was closed. Hell, he might even join him and let someone else deal with this crap. From the corners of his eyes, he saw his partner wipe his eyes before storming out. On the bed, the dead girl lay waiting to be avenged.

Tying his chestnut curls into a ponytail so as to not shed all over the crime scene, Noboru debated whether or not to follow his partner. But someone needed to be here, and he wasn't as emotionally involved as Mamoru. So he looked anywhere but at the victim's face and set to work. It wasn't even possible to tell which hair colour the women had had because all of her hair had been burnt away. Ash and dust danced in the stale air, set into motion by the police men littering the room. A light flashed; one of the officer had begun to take the necessary pictures. Noboru closed his eyes and wished that he would have chosen another job. This was too hard.  
"Lads, step out for a sec, okay? I need to look at the room for a minute." His colleagues obliged him, all shuffling out as fast as possible. Noboru didn't doubt that they would return with Vick Vaporub smeared under their noses; the smell was beginning to get to him. It was something they didn't teach you in the Academy: the smell of rotting flesh caused headaches likes nothing else in the world. It blocked your respiratory passages, turned your stomach upside down, tied your brain into a tight knot. And it lingered on your skin for days. No shower in the world could erase this smell. The woman's unburned flesh had turned purple, and while the decay would have progressed even faster had she died in summer, the sight of her was repulsive nevertheless. A few weeks ago, she might have been pretty, she might have been the most beautiful woman on earth, who knew, but now she was just an image that would haunt Noboru in his nightmares for years to come. He had tried his best not to show it in front of Mamoru or the rest of the team, but dead bodies that already begun to decompose were his kryptonite.  
Swallowing down the bile that was rising in his throat, he crouched next to the bed and looked at her. She was dressed in a nightgown. No wedding band, but silver earrings dangled from her ears. Her left calf might have been adorned with a tattoo, but with the massive decomposition that had already taken place, it was impossible to be certain. Hanzo would have to tell him more. Suddenly, it was all too much and Noboru stepped away from her again, almost sending her nightstand crashing to the the floor. He just managed to catch it and instinctively, he wanted to take a deep breath, but he stopped himself just in time. Instead, he looked down on the floor. Right, the shards. He had noticed those earlier, but hadn't really checked where they were from. Scanning the floor, it didn't take him all that long to find out that a mirror in the corner had been destroyed in the unsuccessful fight for the victim's life. But there was something else...

Alone with the dead woman in a room full of old flowers, Noboru picked a smashed picture frame up.  
He looked at it for a while before he walked out of the house. He didn't stop to talk to any of his colleagues that lingered in the sitting room, but headed straight out. His heart had begun to beat faster and harder in fearful anticipation. Mamoru was sitting on the small porch, head in his hands. Folding his considerable length together, Noboru sat down next to him and wordlessly handed him the picture.  
Ami Mizuno, Minako Aino, Usagi and a tall woman with a bouncy brunette ponytail smiled at the camera, the ocean behind them.

* * *

Their Chief Inspector seemed just as lost as they were. Looking at Mamoru Chiba was a painful experience. The young widower had shut down completely after Noboru had shown him the picture of his wife and the other victims. While Noboru had managed to go back into the house and finish the first assessment of the crime scene, Mamoru hadn't moved until the body was transported away. Only then did he go to his car, climbed onto the passenger seat and waited for Noboru to drive them back to the station. And now they were sitting in their Chief's tidy and spacious office, so unlike their own, and Noboru Sanjoin had begun to come clean. The Chief Inspector stared into his cup of coffee while he listened to the younger Inspector who sighed and ran his hands through his hair before crossing them behind his neck. He looked at the ceiling while he spoke, anywhere but at the man next to him.

"So there is a connection between all three victims, and we...I have reason to suspect that... that Usagi was involved in this somehow, too. Setsuna Meioh, Aino's manager, claims that Usagi had been to see Aino on the night of her death. Usagi's, that is, not Aino's-... Anyway, I spoke to the Chief Inspector of the fire-fighters who were at the house later that night, and he said that even though he didn't find any proof, he suspected it had been arson. Which means that we might talk about four victims and not just three. But because there was no definitive proof, barely any evidence even, he kept quiet. He meant well." An unspoken apology hung in the air, but Mamoru didn't respond. Noboru counted to ten before he continued. It seemed impossible that the hard part still lay ahead of him.  
"Setsuna Meioh claimed that Usagi and Minako were in a heated argument that night. Minako was worried about something, but Usagi blew her off. It ended with Usagi leaving the recording studio and Aino remaining behind. Meioh said that Aino was unable to continue recording, she was too distressed and kept trying to call Usagi. Eventually, she left. This is significant because they only had the studio space booked for another four days and they usually recorded until morning. According to the studio's security logs, Aino left at three fifteen. The fire fighters arrived at the Chib- ... at your house at about three forty-three. Mamoru, I am so sorry." Finally, Noboru looked at his partner, his brown eyes pleading.

"Chiba, I have to take you off the case, I'm sorry." The Chief Inspector's voice was gruff.  
Mamoru nodded, his blank eyes fixed on the floor. It hadn't been an accident. While he had been working overtime, his wife had been murdered. She hadn't been asleep. Her heart had been cut out of her body. Had she died peacefully, like Minako Aino? Or had she suffered just as much as the woman they had found today? As much as he wanted to believe that the deaths were not connected, it would have been too much of a coincidence had his wife not been the first victim. A group of unlikely friends, all of them dead, and only Usagi had died in an accident? Working in his profession for years had taught him that these sort of coincidences didn't exist. What sort of husband was he? What sort of cop was he to not have seen the signs? And he had always thought he had known everything about Usagi, when in fact, he hadn't even known three of her friends, presumably even her best ones.

On his back, the scratches left by Setsuna burned a hole into his soul. He felt like a traitor.

* * *

**End of Chapter Five.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

**

* * *

**

Noboru hated working alone. So when Mamoru's replacement came along, he was relieved. That was until he had spent ten minutes with Haruka Teno.  
The text Mamoru got read the following: COME HERE AND SAVE ME; NEW PARTNER IS A HELL UVA BITCH. EVEN U R NICER.  
The second one read: GET UR ACT 2GETHER, GO TO THE CAPT. & BEG TO BE REINSTATED.  
The third one was a lot simpler: WANKER.  
It was the fourth one that caused him to get up for the first time in days.  
"U OWE IT 2 USAGI."

* * *

For once, even Katsurou Hanzo looked troubled.  
He crossed his arms in front of his chest as stared at the remains of the woman on the table and it was the first time Noboru had seen him affected by someone's death. So McCreepy had feelings after all, Noboru noticed. It was easier to focus on the coroner than on the dead woman. But as soon as Hanzo began to speak, Noboru knew that running away from the awful reality he lived in wasn't an option.  
"She has suffered. Look at the burns on her arms. You can actually see the bones in places." He cleared his throat, and his voice was full of pity. "I don't think we will find any sedatives in her blood." Always reliable, Hanzo had delivered the bloodwork as soon as he returned from his sick leave. It had proved Mamoru's suspicion to be true; both Mizuno and Aino had been heavily sedated at the time of their death.  
"At least she put up a hell of a fight," Noboru stated with a note of pride. As an afterthought, he added: "I'd be surprised if you wouldn't find some DNA on her." The two men looked at each other, both sickly pale under the merciless halogen lamps but with a glimmer of hope in their eyes. Maybe they could catch the killer before the next girl died.  
Their conversation was interrupted by Haruka, who had strolled into the room as if she owned it, clearly having listened in on them from the doorway.  
"That much is obvious. Of course we are going to find DNA on her, look at the state she is in. I can't believe that you don't even have a lead, Sanjoin. Three victims and nothing to go by? What have you done in the past weeks, blow-dry your hair?" Haruka Teno was not impressed, and she didn't hold back. The female inspector was dressed in her usual tough cop attire: a black tailored leather jacket, biker boots and some very expensive jeans. Rumour had it that she had a rather pretty and feminine girlfriend, but no one had seen that elusive creature as of yet. Probably because she's a figment of Teno's imagination, Noboru thought viciously. Haruka eyed him up and down and then spat:  
"Mark my words, now that I'm on this case, things will get going. No more of that holing up in your office and talking about your private life, do you hear me?"  
Noboru gritted his teeth, decided to emphatically not hear her and focused on the lesser of two evils, namely Katsurou. It was a measure of his dislike for the female Inspector that he would rather speak with the coroner than with her.  
"Do you have any idea what she has been burnt with?"  
"No, not yet. These burns don't look like anything I've ever seen before. I couldn't determine what the first two victims had been burnt with, but I might have a chance with this one."  
"Tell me as soon as you know, okay?"  
"I will. Give my regards to your partner."  
"I'm standing right here, Hanzo," said Haruka with an annoyed voice. The coroner raised one white eyebrow and measured Haruka up and down. She bristled under his examination, and Noboru could practically see how the coroner's amused expression ruffled her feathers.  
"I'm talking about his real partner."  
Noboru barked a laugh, the sound resonating on the green tiles.  
Haruka turned beet red and Noboru could have sworn that he saw Katsurou chuckle. Hell had just frozen over.

* * *

Since Mamoru had been pulled off the case, his Chief Inspector had decided that they should have daily progress meetings. At 12 o'clock each day, which was in so far problematic as that Noboru was chronically late. Mamoru had always taken care of them being on time, and since Noboru tried to spent as little time with Haruka as possible, he was a glorious half an hour late. Fortunately, this meant that Haruka Teno had been there, given the Chief Inspector her report and left. Now Noboru and the Chief Inspector sat in the cafeteria instead of the office and were quietly talking about Noboru's most recent findings. He had spent the morning trying to dig up information about the last victim and tried not to give too much thought to what might have happened to the victims' hearts. God, he hoped they weren't looking for a cannibal. It was the one thing he couldn't handle; people eating each other. Shuddering, he focused on his Chief Inspector and began to relate the little he had found about the last victim.  
"The name is Kino, Makoto. She was 26 years old, worked as a waitress. Her parents died in a car crash when she was still a child. There is no other family."  
"Do you know how she is connected to the other victims?"  
Noboru gave the Chief Inspector the framed photograph he found at the crime scene.  
"She was friends with them. They didn't meet as often now as they did when they were teenagers, but Kino's colleagues at the café confirmed that Mizuno came by regularly and so did Usagi before she died. They also mentioned a visit or two by Aino. Caused quite a stir, you can imagine, international popstar walking in a regular café to hang out with a waitress."  
The Chief Inspector looked thoughtful.  
"I remember Usagi's funeral, but I don't recall having seen the brunette there."  
"That's Makoto Kino. And I asked Mamoru and he was positive that neither Aino nor Kino had been there. It was only Mizuno."  
"You will need to find out why. Ask Chiba about Mizuno's and Usagi's friendship. And then come back and report to me, I want to know how he is doing."  
"Sir, with all respect, he needs to work. He's going crazy without it." If Mamoru would at least get hammered, Noboru would feel lots better. Instead his partner sat on his couch, staring holes into his wedding picture and occasionally touching the copies of the case files Noboru had dumped on Chiba's door mat table immediately after the suspension.  
"He's got work, loads of it, just not on this case. He's too involved, and even mentioning his wife sends him into depression. So don't let me catch you telling him anything about the case, do you hear me? No, Sanjoin, you'll work with Teno and that's my final word on the matter."  
"She's a bitch."  
"I'll pretend you haven't said that."  
Shooting his superior a menacing glare that caused the older man to smirk, Noboru got up and walked out of the now crowded cafeteria and called Mamoru, consequences be damned.

* * *

"Beer?" It was the first time they met after Noboru had to confess his doubts about the circumstances of Usagi's death, and the tall man felt that the awkwardness that clung to their conversation could only be banished by lots of alcohol. If pressed, Noboru would actually admit that a good scotch on the rocks was his solution to a great many of life's foils.  
"How about something stronger?" asked Mamoru while shedding out of his wet coat and hanging it over the back of a chair. Of course, Noboru didn't own a clothes tree. Give or take one or two future girlfriends, this fact might change, but unless a woman dragged Noboru to go furniture shopping, he wouldn't. He was fine with a bed, a dining table, two chairs, a couch and his huge TV. What else did a man need, really?  
Just as Mamoru put his shoes under the radiator, he heard his partner's voice calling out to him from the kitchen.  
"Whiskey or vodka?"  
Before Mamoru got to answer, Noboru appeared and put both on the table and went back into the kitchen to fetch some glasses.  
"Hey, I don't have any clean glasses, do you mind drinking from mugs?"  
Bracing himself, Mamoru jumped in. "I slept with Setsuna Meioh the night before we found Ami." It was easier to admit it when Noboru's back was turned to him, Mamoru thought, he didn't want to see his friend's expression. Instead, he noticed a small ficus shoved in a corner. It didn't have a single leaf on it, and had probably not been watered since whatever girlfriend had dragged it into the flat had been given the boot. God forbid Noboru should ever get a pet, it would starve within days.  
The murderer of all things domestic returned with two almost non-chipped mugs, an apple, a very dirty ashtray and a shrewd look on his face.  
"Yeah, I figured as much."  
Mamoru did a double take and stared at his partner. "You did? How?"  
Noboru bit into the apple, grinned and mumbled something that sounded like giantscratches and your neck, which caused Mamoru to sink deeper into his black turtle neck."You're not upset?"  
Chewing, Noboru quipped, "why? Because you got laid before I did or because you slept with a suspect?"  
Mamoru flinched, but Noboru reached over the table and patted his shoulder awkwardly while munching on his apple. "Come on, 's not that bad."  
"So we're good?"  
"Yeah, we're good, mate. Enough with the girl talk, we have a case to solve and by God, we will do, even if it is only to get Teno off my back. She told me the other day that she should drive the car because I was clearly to stupid to adhere to the most basic rules of traffic. I'm an excellent driver, fucking perfection behind a wheel!" They spent the next twenty minutes verbally ripping Haruka Teno to shreds, united again in their dislike of her.

It was Mamoru who changed the subject, grounding them again.  
"Why were you so convinced that Nigoshi is innocent?"  
"Intuition."  
"Nothing more?"  
"Dunno, feels like I know him. Doesn't make any sense, but there it is."  
"He has a ruthless streak. I see that he can't be our murderer now, but there is something wrong with this guy."  
Noboru laughed without humour.  
"That's precisely the way I feel about Setsuna Meioh. She has alibis for each murder, which is annoying. She wasn't even in the country when Kino was killed, but I don't trust her." Hanzo had been able to date Kino's murder back to early October. Minako Aino and Setsuna Meioh had been in London at the time, trying to break the European market. It hadn't been successful then, but now people all over the world listened to Aino's songs. She would have been filthy rich by now, had she only lived to make use of it.  
"So both your suspect and mine are innocent. Where does that leave us?"  
"At the beginning. Aino's lover. We still haven't found him. And for the record, I don't like Nigoshi. He would stab his own brother in the back without hesitating for a second. He's a right little wanker." Noboru finished his apple, put the core into the ashtray and filled two glasses with whiskey. Mamoru took his and downed it before answering.  
"If you want to start at the beginning, we need to go back even further. We need to find out more about why these girls were friends, how Usagi fits into this and whether or not she was our first victim."  
"That's precisely what the chief told me to do."  
"What about Teno?"  
"Let Teno find Aino's lover. We will work on this. Together."  
And then it felt like that moment on the bridge again, the two of them against the rest of the world. Their resolution was grim, but firm.

Offering Mamoru a cigarette, Noboru spoke.  
"And I think there is something else we need to do. Before the murders, we only knew that Usagi and Ami had been friends, that wasn't a secret. But the friendship to Aino and Kino, that was the big surprise. So what if there are other people involved in this we haven't found yet? Potential victims, you know? I don't think we're at the bottom of this yet, feels as if there is far more to come." Mamoru had noticed years ago that Noboru's gut instint was something to be trusted. In this context, it send shivers down the widower's spine.  
"Who are you thinking about?"  
"Dunno. One of the waitresses mentioned another girl Makoto used to hang around with. Approximately the same age, dark hair, posh." Noboru put the picture of the four girls on the table, he had taken to carrying it around with him as a constant reminder of all the things he had yet to do. "Who took this picture? When was it taken? If we find that out, we might be able to save someone's life."  
Toying with his empty glass, Mamoru examined the picture more closely. Usagi was still young in it, a teenager. Fuck, she had been so pretty when she wore her hair like that. Teasing her about her hair style had been his attempt to flirt with her, only that she hadn't appreciated it at all. It was only when they accidentally met at Motoki's that they started to get along. Well, started to fall in love, really. He cleared his throat.  
"Usagi stopped wearing her hair like that on her eighteenth birthday. But it was after her sixteenth, because that's when I gave her that necklace." He pointed to a small silver heart dangling from Usagi's neck.  
"You take the picture to Usagi's and Ami's parents, see what they know, and I'll talk to Aino's family again, 'kay? And wear a bloody scarf when you go to the Tsukinos, you look like a randy teenager. I told you Meioh was mean." Without thinking, Mamoru grabbed the apple core from the ashtray and threw it at Noboru's head. His partner laughed, his eternally good nature once again on display.

* * *

The next day, Mamoru went to visit his in-laws.  
He put on another black turtle-neck sweater (he had several of those) to hide the new marks left by Setsuna. He had dropped by her place after leaving Noboru's the evening before, and while Mamoru was certain that he wasn't in love, her company kept him busy at night. It did limit his choice of clothing considerably though because a man his age couldn't walk around town covered from head to toe in love bites and scratches, but it was well worth it. After meeting Setsuna, Mamoru was so exhausted that he slept like the dead. No dreams, no memories, no anything. The guilty conscience came during the day, for instance in this very moment as he rung the Tsukino's bell. Their house looked just as it had the first time he had picked Usagi up for a date. Two orderly flowerpots on each side of the door, white curtains in the windows. He remembered that she had worn a pink dress with little white polka dots on it, and her hand had been soft and small in his own. Before he could lose himself further in the memories, the door opened and he was eye to eye with his father-in-law. He had aged a lot, Mamoru noticed. Kenji's hair was now almost completely white.

Kenji and Ikuko hadn't seen much of him in the past year, but they had always liked Mamoru, so he was welcomed with open arms despite the early hour and not announcing his visit beforehand. Their living-room held many framed pictures of their children and it was clear that their dead daughter was just as much a part of their life as their living son. It suddenly occurred to Mamoru that he had no idea what Shingo was doing these days. The last he remembered was Usagi telling him that Shingo had decided to become an engineer shortly before she died. Mamoru sat down in the orange armchair that had been part of the Tsukino's house for ages. Kenji and Ikuko sat down on the couch opposite him.  
"Kenji, Ikuko... I have some bad news." Ikuko gripped Kenji's hand instinctively. The way Mamoru opened the conversation evoked memories of the night a police officer had accompanied their son-in-law to their house, bearing the news of the fire and their beloved child's death.  
"What happened?" The white haired man asked, fear for his son flickering in his eyes.  
"Ami Mizuno was murdered last week."  
Kenji looked at his wife, incomprehension on his features. He clearly didn't remember who Ami Mizuno was. Ikuko closed her eyes, her lips forming a tight line in face. With deep reluctance, Mamoru forced himself to continue, now chiefly addressing his mother-in-law. "That's not all. Before she died, I met Ami Mizuno on Minako Aino's funeral. Did you know that Usagi and Minako had been friends?"  
The clock in the kitchen was ticking. The sound of cars driving was barely audible in the pristine living-room. Not one of the picture frames on the walls was coated in dust.  
It was Kenji who spoke.  
"The pop singer? No, we had no idea, did we, Ikuko?" His wife had stood up and retrieved a picture showing Usagi and Ami in high school. Each of the girls held a pink ice lolly, but it was only Usagi who had managed to spill something on the bow of her uniform. "Ikuko?"  
Her voice was soft when she spoke. In fact, Mamoru had only ever heard her raise it at her daughter and it seemed that this vigour had died with Usagi.  
"They met because they shared a tutor. Minako was very lively, I was always worried that she would distract Usagi even more from school. You know how Usagi was, she loved to have fun and do silly things. I can't even count how often she brought bad reports home, but people liked her. Loved her, even. I think Minako was the same way, only less gullible and more calculating. Even when she was still young, she knew how to work her charm. I even spoke to her mother about it once, Mrs. Aino promised to talk to Minako, but I don't think she did. But Usagi never cared, she adored Minako. They were like sisters."  
Mamoru smiled tersely. "Usagi never mentioned Minako Aino to me."  
Kenji looked back and forth between is wife and his son-in-law.  
"Our daughter knew a pop star?"  
"No, dear. Our daughter knew Minako Aino, a school girl. Just like she knew Ami Mizuno, a school girl, not Ami Mizuno, the little genius." She handed the picture to her husband, and Kenji's eyes widened. Now he knew who Ami Mizuno was. Ikuko patted her husband's hand absent-mindedly before turning to Mamoru again. "How is Mrs. Mizuno taking the news? Can you give me her current address? I'd love to bring her some food. Not that it matters, food, in the face of such a tragedy, but well... it might help her to know people care. Ami was such a sweet girl."  
Nodding, Mamoru took his notepad from the pocket of his green jacket and wrote Mrs. Mizuno's address down. He added her phone number for good measure, figuring that Ikuko would use it well. Kenji got up and left the room, only to return a minute later with his briefcase in hand.  
"I have to go to work. Mamoru, if you feel that there is something I can help with, let me know, but I think that Ikuko knows more about Ami than I do." The two men shook hands, and Kenji left. Ikuko smiled, "I keep telling him that it's time to retire, but you know how he is. So stubborn. I think Usagi got it from him." The mother and the husband sunk into silence, taking another endless moment to wish that things would have happened differently. Eventually, Ikuko got up and walked into the kitchen, beckoning Mamoru to follow her.

He watched her prepare some tea, and before he knew it, he had a sandwich in front of him. It seemed easier to talk in the kitchen, for there were no framed pictures of Usagi on the walls. Here it was all about recipes and flowers, and Mamoru wished that he was able to remember his own mother better.  
"Mamoru, how about you eat and I tell you what I can about Usagi and Minako."  
He nodded, and spent the next two hours listening to Ikuko recount all the little things Usagi doubtlessly thought her mother had no idea about. Minako had visited the Tsukino's house frequently, and it had only stopped when Usagi met Mamoru and the two began dating. Ami had been a constant presence, regardless of Mamoru's role in Usagi's life. But Usagi and Minako had been in touch over the years, and had grown closer again after the wedding. Mamoru pulled the picture of the four girls from his pockets and handed it to Ikuko.  
"Do you know the brunette?"  
"Makoto Kino." Not a moment of hesitation. "Mamoru, did something happen to Makoto?"  
"We found her on Sunday. She was killed in the same manner as Minako Aino and Ami. Ikuko, do you know when and where this picture was taken? Was Usagi close to Makoto? Was it only the four of them or was there another girl?" Ikuko ran a finger over the picture.  
"The girls went on a holiday to the seaside when they were sixteen. I was very much against it, felt that they were too young to travel alone and unsupervised, but Usagi sent Ami to convince me and she did. Wait a minute, please." She left the room and Mamoru heard the familiar creak of the stairs. When Ikuko returned, she carried a photo album with her. Putting it between the two of them on the kitchen table, she opened it and Mamoru scooted closer. The first picture was one of Usagi and Ami, the former throwing her arms around the shy girl with exorbitant affection. More pictures in the same vein followed, all four girls appeared sooner or later; hugging, laughing, doing silly things for the camera. After a few pages, an unknown face appeared.  
"Who's that?"  
"That's Rei. Rei Hino."

Something pushed itself against Mamoru's legs and when he saw down and saw Luna, Usagi's cat, a small piece of the puzzle fell into place. Aino's cat, the one she had adopted and that had disappeared without a trace. "Ikuko, when did you get Luna?" Ikuko bent down and picked the black cat up, putting it on her lap.  
"Oh, it must have been ages ago. She's very old, but still astonishingly healthy. Usagi brought her home when she was 14, found the poor mitten on the street where some wild boys had tormented it." Just as Mamoru was busy processing this piece of information and wondering what it meant that the girls had adopted pets at the same time, Ikuko laughed.  
"But I think I'm just as bad as my daughter. About a week ago, a white cat strolled around the house. It did wear a name tag, and I put up posters all over the neighbourhood, but no one has claimed him, so I think I'll keep the little one. Really, there's no difference feeding two instead of one, is there?"  
Too much of a coincidence, Mamoru thought, eyeing Luna with sudden apprehension.  
"What's the cat's name?"  
"Artemis. Sounds nice together, doesn't it? Luna and Artemis."

At the same time, Haruka Teno released the pictures of Minako Aino and Kaitou Ace. She picked only the relatively harmless ones and kept the ones featuring the blow job firmly under wraps, but the press went wild anyway. The blonde Inspector knew that it wouldn't be long before someone delivered her Ace on a silver plate. That would teach Chiba and Sanjoin a thing or two about proper police work.

* * *

**End of Chapter Six.**


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

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Mamoru's flat, once so tidy and organised, was looking more and more like the office he and Noboru shared in the police station. There were two empty pizza boxes on a stack of old letters and postcards from Usagi, a number of Minako Aino's CDs, copies of Ami's journal and last but not least a picture of the white cat Mamoru had seen earlier this afternoon. Noboru was currently leaning against the wall and devouring the last slice of the triple cheese pizza, speaking with his mouth full and thus turning his words into gibberish.

"Thash sh sho weird, ishn't it?" Gulping the rest of the food down, he continued, more intelligible this time. "Minako and Usagi adopted cats at the same time, Usagi dies, Minako dies, and her cat finds its way to Usagi's mother who lives in a completely different part of the city. If that's a coincidink, I will come to the office tomorrow dressed like Teno, complete with blonde wig and all."

Mamoru laughed and leaned back in his chair.

"Now you're making me wish it's a coincidence. Just to see Teno's face. And then yours after she beats you into a bloody pulp."

"She's all smug; stupid woman is convinced that Kaitou Ace is going to show up any minute now. If I were the secret lover of a murdered pop sensation, I wouldn't walk into the nearest police station and go all 'hey, here I am, did you want something?' and hope for the best. No way. I'd hide where I can never be found." Noboru plonked down on Mamoru's couch and leaned back. He rubbed his eyes; this case was wearing him out. If there was one thing he needed right now, it was a solid twelve hours of sleep. After a good night's fuck with a gorgeous woman he had yet to find, that is.

"I'm surprised that press hasn't gotten wind of Ami and Kino." The TV had been running 24/7 since the two man had decided to solve the case together despite the Chief Inspector's orders. The news had little to offer, and while this was theoretically good, it was nevertheless frustrating Mamoru to no end. There were never any straight-forward answer, and Teno's plan had come to a standstill.

"The Chief Inspector knows that this needs to stay secret until we find the connection, otherwise our killer will just run and hide, and we're never seeing him again. Which I think is precisely what Ace is doing now, hiding."

"Any luck finding Rei Hino?" Mamoru grabbed the remote and turned the volume down until barely a whisper could be heard. Noboru scratched his nose.

"Nope. Which I still can't wrap my mind around, by the way. I mean, hello! She's a senator's daughter, for crying out loud. How difficult can it be to find her?"

"Does her father know anything?"

"Man, you don't keep up with the news, do you? Senator Hino died one and half years ago."

Mamoru scowled, and his eyes darkened. "Same time as Usagi died. So no, didn't watch the news then. Any chance it was murder?"

Brushing over the fact that he had just put his foot massively in his mouth, Noboru shrugged and lit a cigarette with a wry smile. "Depends on what you think about the cigarette industry."

"So we're talking cancer?"

"Aye."

"Stop smoking then, you idiot. Don't even know when you picked that filthy habit up. Where does the paper trail lead us?"

Noboru examined his cigarette, and decided to ignore Mamoru's warning. "She attended the T*A Private Girls School, a Catholic school run by nuns and graduated there at the same time as Usagi, Minako, Ami and Makoto did at Juban high school. No contact to her father other than birthday cards from her ninth birthday onwards. She lived with her grandfather until the old man died, he was a Shinto priest and ran the Hikawa shrine. She inherited the shrine and closed it. And here the story ends, nothing else there. No credit cards, no mobile phone contracts, nothing. The waitresses at Hino's café said that she was last seen about the time of her father's death. Which means that she might be our first victim."

"Do we have names of anyone else she was associated with? Friends, other family, colleagues?"

"The shrine hired a help the summer Hino turned 16. His name is Yuichiro Kumada. Other than that, it was only Hino and her grandfather." Noboru got up and began to walk useless little circles around the couch.

"Great. What happened to Kumada?"

"What makes you think that something happened to him?"

"Noboru, you don't exactly have your happy face on." Noboru stepped into the hallway and looked in the mirror, returning seconds later.

"I see what you mean about the face." He sat down on the couch again. "Kumada moved to the States two years ago. He lives somewhere in the mountains, and has neither phone nor email."

"Great." Noboru began to look for an ashtray, and after not finding one anywhere near him, threw his cigarette into Mamoru's water glass. To say that his partner was not impressed was an understatement, but once again, Noboru shrugged it off and just continued the conversation.

"I'd say we go back to Aino's penthouse and look for evidence again. We need to go back to the beginning, there are too many dead ends where we are now."

Mamoru crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Search warrant for Hino?"

"On what account? Knowing the dead girls' club?"

Mamoru closed his eyes, and Noboru cursed. Foot, mouth, again and that in less than three minutes.

"Fuck. I mean sorry."

"It's okay. Not your fault that one of the victims is my wife."

"I should really learn to keep my mouth shut at times, shouldn't I?"

"Naw, you're good. So no search warrant. How else can we find her?"

"We could send Nigoshi on her trail. He owes me, and he's good at finding people."

"Hmph. So are you. This has got to be the first time that you're not finding someone you're looking for."

A wistful expression crossed Noboru's face and he looked outside the window at the darkening sky. Soon the stars would come out to illuminate his failure. "Not the first time, no."

"Elaborate." Mamoru's interest had been peaked. He knew too little about his friend, and these rare moments of insight were all the more precious for it. But Noboru reached for the jacket he had tossed on the couch when he arrived, got up and strode to the door, calling over his shoulder as he went. "Doesn't matter. No use crying over spilt milk."

"Sure?"

"Yeah. So here's today's version of our to-do list: check Aino's penthouse, check Ami's house, and begin searching Kino's home. Oh, and if we could find out which motive the killer has, that would be swell, too."

And with that, Noboru grinned and left.

* * *

Minako Aino's penthouse didn't hold many surprises.

"Where are the pictures of her and Usagi? I can't believe she didn't have any, she must have hidden them. But where? And why?"

Mamoru looked around, his eyes finally settling on a ventilating shaft.

"Maybe up there?"

Without hesitation, Noboru grabbed the desk chair, put it under the shaft and climbed up, a screwdriver already in hand. He always carried one with him, along with a notepad, two pens (just in case he lost one), a lighter and a bottle of water. He was nothing if not prepared.

"Nothing here but dust."

Mamoru frowned, slowly turning on his heels to get a better view of the room.

"Under her mattress?"

"The forensic people took the whole thing with them to check for traces of DNA, remember?"

"Right. Erm..."

"Let's look at the desk again. All the important stuff was in there and we might have gotten a little sidetracked after finding the NC-17 shots."

They made their way over and emptied the desk systematically. They found nothing that seemed even remotely connected to the case, and both men were growing impatient.

"There has to be something! The woman didn't have a safe deposit box, had only this property and never ever visited her childhood home. And after years of friendship, you accumulate some shit, you just do."

Noboru gave the desk a random kick, prompting Mamoru to laugh. They hadn't noticed the tall figure entering.

"Now, Inspector Sanjoin, careful. This may be evidence."

Both Noboru and Mamoru whipped around, only to find Katsurou Hanzo standing in the doorway, looking very much like a teacher that walked in on his students setting the school mascot on fire.

"What are you doing here?" Noboru asked with more than a little resentment, "the dead have been transported to your little dungeon over a week ago."

"Teno was in my... little dungeon, as you so aptly called it. She told me that you wanted to search Aino's apartment again, and felt that it was fruitless." Katsurou looked at Mamoru. "Given the recent developments in this case, I'm inclined to disagree and thought you might need some help since I assumed your partner was still banned from working with you."

"Mamoru wasn't banned from working with me, he was banned from working period," Noboru murmured disgruntledly and turned his back on the coroner to give the desk another kick.

"That's very nice of you, Katsurou." Mamoru managed to look thankful, even though he wasn't sure that he wanted the man here. In front of Katsurou Hanzo, he couldn't afford one moment of weakness and if they really did find some additional information connecting Aino to his late wife, then control might be hard to come by. Shuffling his feet, he watched Noboru trying to adjust to Katsurou's presence. In other circumstances, it might have actually been funny.

"So I take it you have looked at the ventilating shafts?" The coroner's green eyes scanned the room.

"Yes, but there was nothing in them."

"Many desks have secret drawers, have you checked whether this one does?"

"No." Noboru's answer was sullen.

"Allow me, I'm an expert in finding them." Katsurou spoke politely, and Mamoru could tell that the coroner was trying not to offend Noboru. Mamoru could also tell that all of this effort was destined to go to waste.

"I thought you were an expert in finding out how people died?" Arms crossed in front of his broad chest, Noboru glared at the coroner.

"That too."

"And where does your expertise on desks come from?"

"I build them."

"Sorry?"

"It's a hobby. Woodwork." Katsurou shrugged out of his trench and put it carefully over the back of a chair. It looked expensive, well worn and even better cared for. You could tell that the coroner didn't by his clothes for the sake of fashion, but for durability. Noboru was grinning from ear to ear.

"You built desks in your free time? See, Mamoru, I told you he doesn't have a girlfriend!"

Resisting the urge to smack Noboru's head against a wall or bury his own in his hands, Mamoru shot the coroner an apologetic smile.

"I would appreciate it if we could focus on the case and not my private life. I believe you were busy searching this place, weren't you, Sanjoin?" While speaking, Katsurou's knocked on the table, tracing his fingers over the cherry wood.

"Yeah, I was, but since you are so good at it, why don't I just sit back and wait until you find the necessary evidence within three minutes of your arrival and- WHAT THE FUCK!"

With a look that could only be described as triumphant, Katsurou Hanzo offered Noboru the small secret drawer he had pulled out of the desk. "And just so you know, it only took me two minutes to find it."

Minako Aino hadn't hidden much in the drawer. In fact, there were only three pictures in there. One was from the same series of pictures Mamoru had seen at Usagi's house. It showed five pretty teenagers, all laughing for the camera. Now, all but one of them were dead. The second picture was a portray of a man. It was black and white, but you could nevertheless that he had curly blonde hair. And yet...

"I'm fairly certain that this is not Kaitou Ace...," Mamoru said while bringing the photo even closer to his eyes. He squinted.

Noboru held the the third picture in his hands, his face heavy and suddenly without colour.

"Well, and I'm absofuckinglutely certain that this is you."

He threw the third picture on the desk's smooth surface and 19 year old Mamoru Chiba smiled back at them. He wore the uniform of his youth, his trademark green jacket and the black turtle-neck he had recently taken to wearing again because of Setsuna's marks on his body. The boy in the photo clutched some medicine books, and his smile was genuine, almost infectious. Mamoru remembered when and by whom it had been taken. The first day of university, Motoki insisted on documenting it to prove that it did really happen.

Katsurou picked the picture up. Something had caught his eye when Noboru tossed it on the table. He turned it, and there it was. On the back, someone had jotted down a single word with purple ink.

_Endymion._

_

* * *

_

The three of them drove to Ami's flat soon after. They took Katsurou's car, so the coroner drove, Mamoru took the passenger seat and Noboru folded all of six foot and four inches in the back-seat of the silver Lexus GS.

"I'm taller than both of you, so why am I in the back?" Katsurou didn't bother to answer, and Mamoru shot his partner a pleading look, one that asked for patience and good behaviour, two things Noboru wasn't even sure he had in him right now. Not after Hanzo butting in and doing his work for him. So instead, Noboru retaliated by shoving his knees in the back of Mamoru's seat, but Mamoru didn't even notice it as he began to talk to Katsurou about woodwork and the different types of secret drawers one could build into a desk. The conversation kept the widower's reeling mind pleasantly busy, but every once in a while the obvious questions resurfaced, demanding his attention as if he should know the answers by heart. What or or who was Endymion and why had Aino scribbled it on the back of the picture? Why did she even have a picture of him? When they arrived at their destination, Mamoru practically jumped out of the car. He strode inside the house quickly, wondering whether this was the place where they would find another hint in this scavenger hunt the murderer made them play.

Ami's flat was quiet. Little spoke of the suffering that had taken place here; there weren't even blood stains.

Where Minako's house had been a crime scene from the start, all three men felt that Ami's house had been a home, and one that dearly missed its former inhabitant. The books on the shelves were accumulating dust, the leaves of the plants in the living-room were drooping and drying up and the milk in the fridge had gone sour. Ami's small study was very tidy, only a laptop computer set on the desk. There were no stray pages of reports, no thumbed-through magazines, not even candles. This was the room the bright doctor had reserved for working: there was nothing personal to be found here.

Mamoru flipped the laptop open and found that it wasn't even protected by a password. Either Ami Mizuno had not kept her secrets here or she didn't have any. Indeed, the computer held little information aside form work-related documents, and this time, they found no secret drawer in the desk. Pictures of Usagi and Ami decorated the walls in the hallway, the story of a friendship there for everyone to see, and Mamoru remembered having taken quite a lot of them himself.

In the back of the wardrobe in the bedroom, Noboru found a pink box with concert tickets, CDs and pictures of Usagi, Aino and Ami, but there was not even a hint that Ami had known Rei Hino and Makoto Kino.

It made Noboru immediately suspicious. Someone who didn't even use a passwort on her computer would surely see no need to hide pictures of laughing friends. He put the box on the bed and prowled the apartment again, his eyes scanning the walls and eventually, he called to the two other men from the hallway.

"I think the murderer took something after he killed her. Look, here's an nail in the wall, but there's nothing hanging from it. Might have been a picture of the two other girls, might have been the group picture. Looking at this place makes me think that Ami wasn't the sort of person to leave unused nails in the walls - it's too homey and tidy for that."

Mamoru inched closer and examined the wall by looking over his partner's shoulder. Katsurou remained in the bedroom and flicked through the pink box, picking up a picture every once in a while. The blonde in the pictures didn't look a bit like the corpse he had on his examination table two weeks ago. She was bubbly, pretty, alive. He traced her face with his finger, and wondered why the pretty school girl had turned into the vixen singer the world came to know her as. When the coroner felt Noboru's eyes on him, he slowly put the pictures back in and the lid on the box. The two men stared at each for a moment, but then Mamoru spoke and broke the building tension.

Grieve was tugging at Mamoru's shoulders as he said that he didn't remember what had been hanging from this nail despite having been to Ami's place several times when his wife was still alive, and Noboru instinctively cracked a joke to make Mamoru feel better. His partner rewarded him with a hesitant smile, and took out his camera to take pictures of Ami's flat.

They left not a bit smarter than they had arrived, and yet they had spend all afternoon and the evening's first hours searching the place. It was moments such as these that made their so hard, Mamoru thought. You find one hint, think that you're finally making a step in the right direction only to walk right into a dead end. So the murderer had taken something from Ami's flat. They didn't know what it was, and Mrs. Mizuno could only come to the flat to tell them whether or not she was able to identify the missing item tomorrow morning. Right now, the older woman was working in the hospital, saving lives and trying to cope with her daughter no longer being there beside her.

Mamoru was quiet, even more so than Katsurou, and the silence in the car drove Noboru to distraction. He looked outside and noticed that the stars were hidden behind heavy grey clouds; it would rain soon. When they dropped him off in front of Aino's building so that he could pick up his car and Katsurou offered to drive Mamoru home, Noboru stayed behind, wondering why it felt that he was losing his best friend to a man who didn't even know what friendship was. The silver Lexus turned around the car, and was gone. Pushing his hands into his pockets, Noboru walked to his car.

* * *

The bar was seedy. Small, crowded, smelly. The sawdust on the floor was littered with old cigarette stumps, bottle caps and a few other things that found their way to the floor of a bar in the wrong end of town.

The clientèle consisted of mainly middle-aged men with violent faces and their rather too pretty girlfriends. Upon closer examination, you could tell that the women's' skirts were just a bit too short, their make-up just a bit too bright and their heels just a tad too high.

It was here that the only clue to Rei Hino's whereabouts had lead to.

Noboru had played one of his usual tricks and distributed pictures of Rei Hino to the city's taxi drivers, asking them for help. The inspector felt that it was the least he could do now that Katsurou Hanzo had found the little secret drawer. It wasn't too long before one of the taxi drivers came forward and told the inspector that he remembered having chauffeured the woman to The Crow, the very bar in which Noboru was now standing. Unfortunately, the driver wasn't able to pinpoint when he had taken the pretty girl here, he only remembered her because of her startling violet eyes. He described her as breathtaking.

Ordering a beer, Noboru sat down at the bar, subtly scanning the crowd's for Hino's now familiar face. Would he really find her here? A senator's child, a priest's granddaughter in a bar that was infamous for the young and desperate hookers that frequented it. Knocking his beer back, Noboru decided that it was a very real possibility. It wasn't any unlikelier than a pop star going down on her lover in an alley and befriending the paparazzi who witnessed the act. It wouldn't even be any odder than Aino's cat finding a new home halfway across the city with Usagi's mother. Hell, it wouldn't be odder than catching Katsurou Hanzo looking at a picture of Minako Aino with a forlorn expression in his soulless eyes. No, in this case it didn't matter whether something seemed probable or not.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed someone sliding on the bar stool next to him.

"Hello lover."

The voice was dark, soft, sweet, familiar. It was the sort of voice that made husbands leave their wives, emperors destroy their kingdoms and fools rush to their certain death.

It was dangerous.

It was his heroin.

When Noboru turned his head, he saw the woman he had been looking for. The only one beside Rei Hino he hadn't been able to find despite trying so hard.

Swallowing down the lump in his throat, he inclined his head and welcomed doom.

"Hello Beryl."

* * *

**End of Chapter Seven.**


	8. Chapter 8

**Warning: Dark stuff, depictions of graphic violence and what not. Really, not for the faint of heart. This warning applies for all remaining chapters of this story.**

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**Chapter Eight**

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The movement was soft.

Her full skirt was twirling in a waltz she danced alone, had done so for almost 18 months. On the moss-covered hardwood floor lay her shoes, as if kicked aside because her feet hurt after joyous hours of spinning and twisting and turning to the sound of music heard by no one but her. The gloves on her fingers were still white, pure, untouched, even though the nails underneath them were not. Long black tresses of hair almost touched the floor and the record kept playing and playing and playing, broadcasting Minako Aino's voice to those who could no longer hear.

It was true, your hair didn't stop growing once you died. Neither did your nails. Only the fact that she was dangling from the ceiling kept the worms from finding her. The noose was tight around her broken neck and in a final act of cruelty, her heart had been taken from her before its last beat.

* * *

Mamoru walked up and down the pavement in front of Makoto Kino's house. It was six o'clock in the morning, and the wind was so icy that it felt as if it was cutting into his skin. The street lights were still on, and the sky was full of dark clouds. It had been raining all night; there had been a wild storm raging over Tokyo, keeping its inhabitants awake and denying them the sleep they craved. The rain had stopped when Mamoru left his apartment half an hour ago, but the roads were coated with a thick layer of ice, and he had slipped once already, finding himself flat on his back within seconds.

Rubbing the growing bump on the back of his head, Mamoru waited for his colleagues to arrive. His ears were beginning to ache as well, and he remembered that Usagi had always made him wear hats and gloves in winter. Without her, he just forget these sort of things and froze his extremities off instead.

A silver car pulled up and Katsurou emerged. He wore his customary trench, and a black suit underneath, an attire more suited for a breezy spring day than for one the harshest days of winter. Mamoru noticed with envy that despite his dress shoes, Katsurou didn't seem to have a problem walking on the frozen pavement - his steps were indecently sure-footed.

"Morning."

The coroner inclined his head in way of greeting. "Shall we go inside and start looking?"

Mamoru shoved his hands deep into his pockets to protect them from the cold, a thoroughly fruitless endeavour. "We can't, Noboru has the key and he's not here yet."

Fifteen minutes and just as many unanswered phone calls later, Noboru was still missing, so Mamoru and Katsurou decided to go to Makoto Kino's old workplace instead. They hurried through the cold, thankful that the café was just down the street. The waitress told them that they usually didn't open until seven, but since it was so cold and they were on her deceased colleague's case, she let them in anyway. The staff had put a picture of Kino on the wall, a small token of mourning and remembrance. Once the two men settled comfortably at a table near the window and ordered some coffee, they began to talk.

"I googled the name Endymion yesterday. It's-"

"Greek mythology. Lover of the moon goddess Serene," Katsurou finished for him. "Now what does that have to do with you?" He wasn't the sort of person that wasted time on pleasantries, and his directness was something Mamoru found both vaguely comforting and somewhat terrifying.

Mamoru sipped his coffee to buy himself some time, ignoring that it was still too hot to drink. His fingers were tingling now that they were warming up, and he couldn't remember the last time he had been this cold. Eventually, he answered, annoyed by his own cluelessness. "Nothing. No idea why Aino wrote it on the photo."

Katsurou shot him an inquisitive look, and drummed his left index finger on the table. "Perhaps it's not about you."

"I'm not following."

"Perhaps it's about your wife. Selene... does that ring a bell?"

Mamoru thought of Usagi: bright, lively, happy Usagi. Her image overrode anything else, and his heart clenched.

"No."

The answer was as brief as it was definitive; it might have been more expansive had it been Noboru who asked, but the inspector wasn't here and while Mamoru respected the coroner, he did not consider him a friend. Katsurou changed the topic. "What do you hope to find in Kino's house? The reports say that it was there you found the picture that connected the victims."

"Perhaps some information about how to find Hino. If she's still alive." Silence settled over the table for a minute before Katsurou voiced a thought Mamoru had entertained ever since Noboru told him that there was no paper trail leading to Rei Hino.

"She might be a victim, she might be a suspect."

"I know. But do you really think a woman could do something as gruesome as that? I'd say we're dealing with a male perpetrator here."

Katsurou shook his head, a grim smile playing on his lips. "Don't underestimate women, they can be just as cruel as men."

"But cutting hearts out? Seems like a crime of passion. I think it's Aino's lover." _But then why should Aino's lover kill Kino and Usagi first_, Mamoru wondered. Everywhere his mind went, all he could find was dead ends.

"You neglect that two of the victims were drugged first, Mamoru. That might be a sign of compassion, but it might as well be because the perpetrator knew that in a physical fight, his or her chances weren't good. Which again points to a woman, or to a weak man."

Mamoru nodded reluctantly, and suddenly, a question burst out of him. "Why are you a coroner? Why not work as an inspector? You're good at this."

"Your partner would probably disagree."

"I don't think so."

"I'm not good with people," Katsurou stated matter-of-factly and cupped his coffee mug with both hands. "Can you see me talking to a victim's family?"

"That's something you can learn. I only ever met one person who's a natural at this, and that person is Noboru." Smoothing his tie, Katsurou changed the topic yet again.

"Is it often that he's late?" Mamoru thought about the countless meetings Noboru had arrived late to, out of breath and with a huge grin on his face, and more often than he hadn't managed to be on time because he was flirting with some cute secretary in the hallways.

"Yes, but usually no more than ten to fifteen minutes. Let me call him again."

Mamoru dialled his friend's number, but once again, the phone kept ringing without anyone picking up at the other end of the line. Mamoru looked apologetic. "Maybe he had to go the station, and couldn't make it." Katsurou raised an eyebrow, and Mamoru felt the need to defend his partner. "And I know that he's meeting Mrs. Mizuno at 8 to check for the missing picture."

Outside, it began to rain again.

* * *

After a day spent mulling over how a white cat found its way into his mother-in-law's house, why Minako Aino was interested in Greek mythology and whether Rei Hino was a victim or a murderer, Mamoru needed some distraction. He found Setsuna in her office late at night. It was one of the things he learned first about her: she was a hard worker, and now that Minako Aino was dead, she had even more to do. Who would have thought that the dead needed managers more than the living?

"What are you doing?"

Setsuna looked up from her desk, and smiled when she saw Mamoru leaning against the door frame.

"There will be a Minako Aino remembrance book - all of her most beautiful pictures in one volume. Limited edition, that sort of thing. I'm selecting the pictures right now. Her mother really likes the idea."

Mamoru bit back a cynical remark and walked towards the woman, coming to stand behind her. If anything, Minako Aino's mother liked the money the book would undoubtedly make. A newspaper he had picked up earlier was full of articles about the singer, speculations about Kaitou Ace and his role in her murder, about her secret life, about the hidden reasons of her death. The public loved a good and gruesome murder, and Mamoru thought it was like Roman arenas all over again.

Looking over Setsuna's shoulder, he could smell the manager's heavy perfume. He knew the smell would only get more intense once it mingled with sweat, and his pants were beginning to feel too tight. Setsuna wore a stunning black dress, tailored exactly to her body's each and every curve. He leaned down, and rested his chin on her shoulder, his breath caressing her ears. From this angle, the many facets of the murdered singer were spread on the table for him to take in and once he saw them, his hard-on disappeared as quickly as it came into being.

There were a few pictures of Aino as a little girl, some glamorous ones taken from a magazine photo shoot, a few depicting the young woman on the stage, and last but not least, some that showed her in the recording studio. It was one of those that caught Mamoru's attention. He reached over Setsuna and picked it up. Minako Aino - dolled up and pretty - was sitting on a large red couch, golden curls framing her face while she wrote something in a red notebook. She looked contemplative, focused. Mamoru tensed.

"Setsuna, this book... is it Minako's?" She took the picture from his hands, careful to brush her fingers against his and examined it.

"Yes, it's her notebook. Most people don't know it, but she wrote a lot of her songs herself. She never went anywhere without this, I think she also used it as a diary. Not that she would ever let me have a look at it, the stupid girl threw a tantrum when I asked her whether I could read some of her new material once. As if I wanted to steal from her." She turned to face Mamoru, a seductive smile on her painted lips. "But let's talk about something else, shall we?"

Completely ignoring her overture, Mamoru snatched the picture, put it in one of his coat pockets and made for the door in a few quick strides, calling over his shoulder as he went. "I'll call you tomorrow, I have to speak to someone."

The door slammed shut behind him before Setsuna even had the chance to protest.

* * *

Pounding his fist against the door, harder and harder each time, Mamoru waited for his partner to appear. It wasn't even eleven, and Mamoru knew that his partner never went to bed before midnight.

When the door finally opened, Mamoru was both too enraged and too excited to notice the drawn look on Noboru's face.

"We have to speak to Hisaya Nigoshi again. Now."

Running his hand over his face in a bone-weary motion, Noboru closes his eyes. "Now is not a good time, mate. Can we do it tomorrow?"

"No, we can't, we have to do it now. And where were you this morning? You were supposed to meet us at Kino's house. Anyway: Remember that flashy red notebook Hisaya carries around with him? It's Aino's." He shoved the photo in Noboru's face, waiting for the information to register.

It took Noboru longer than expected.

"What do you mean, it's hers?"

"It's Aino's. Setsuna told me that she used it for new songs, and as a diary. I bet Hisaya stole it when he was in her apartment after the murder."

"What would he want with her diary? If it's about money, he could have just sold the alley shots."

"Exactly. So there has to be some sort of privileged information in there, something that either Aino or Nigoshi wouldn't want known by the public, the police or whoever else would have access to her flat. Remember that Setsuna told us about a fight between Usagi and Aino on the night of the fire? What if Aino wrote something about it in her diary?"

"Wait, let me read between the lines here. You're saying that there might be some information regarding the murderer in here, right? And that Hisaya doesn't want that information out in the open."

"Yes! We might learn something about the murderer's motive from it, some hint as to why Aino was murdered. And that means that Hisaya might know who the murderer is, Noboru! So come on, we have to talk to him, bring him in for questioning."

Noboru turned and walked into his flat, picking up one of his customary lumberjack shirts from the floor. It was then that Mamoru noticed that his partner wasn't wearing a shirt, and more importantly, that his back was covered in angry red welts, some of them were even bleeding. Noboru disappeared into the bedroom.

"Man, what happened to you?" Quickly, Mamoru stepped inside the flat and closed the door behind him.

Noboru returned, a pair of socks in his hand. He sat down on his couch to put them on, careful not to lean back lest his back should come into contact with the couch's rough fabric. "Nothing."

"Noboru..."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"It looks like someone whipped you... You should get someone to look at this."

"Mamoru, I said I don't want to talk about it." The steel in his partner's voice caused Mamoru to shut up.

Hisaya Nigoshi didn't open the door, which wasn't in itself surprising seeing how it was nearing midnight. Mamoru pressed the bell, but nothing happened. It was the second time he stood in front of a closed door, waiting for it to be opened. Noboru stood a little aside, unusually quiet.

"Did you send someone else to meet Mrs. Mizuno at Ami's?"

"Fuck. I completely forgot about that. Maybe Teno went there, I sent her an email about it yesterday afternoon."

Mamoru turned away from the door, frustration tingeing his voice. "He's not in. Nobody can sleep through the sound of that doorbell."

"Yeah. Why don't I call the station and ask to have someone come in for surveillance of the house? Then we can leave, and we'll still know when Nigoshi returns."

"Sounds good."

Noboru placed the call, and the two inspectors left the building. Sneaking glances at his partner every other step, Mamoru plucked up some courage.

"Kinky new girl?"

Noboru took a deep breath. "You might say that. She's a bit intense."

"It it something serious?"

Noboru's face clouded just like the sky above them.

"I don't really do serious, you know that."

"Was she the reason why you weren't at Kino's this morning?"

Noboru nodded, and began to search his pockets for a cigarette.

"Were you at the station today?"

"No, I wasn't, I needed a day off. And now I need sleep. Let's meet in-" Noboru checked his watch. "In six hours at the station, we'll have to talk to the Chief and get you reinstated, okay? And then we'll find Nigoshi."

Their goodbye was brief, and for the rest of the night, Mamoru wondered what on earth had happened to his partner in the last 24 hours.

* * *

**End of Chapter Eight**


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

_**

* * *

**_

It was another cold morning, the ice was still celebrating its reign over the streets, and Mamoru and Noboru were sitting in front of their Chief, receiving the worst dressing down either of the men had experienced in the past three years.

They left the office after twenty minutes, almost shell-shocked by their superior's anger and insistence.

It was Noboru who spoke first.

"So he definitely wasn't happy about you still being involved in the investigation of the Missing Heart murders." The nickname was all over the press, some snarky editor had come up with it and now it stuck to the case like glue, even in the minds of the inspectors involved. Noboru had tried to resist for a few days, but then without noticing, he had slipped into using it and Mamoru had even stopped making a face whenever it was mentioned and accepted it in his usually quiet manner. What he obviously had a little more difficulty coming to terms with was the Chief insistence about the young inspector staying as far away from the investigation as possible. He had been assigned another case: grand theft auto somewhere in the city.

"There's an investigation going on about the death of my wife, and the Chief wants me to track down some rich investment banker's Bugatti." They reached the office and Mamoru slammed the door behind them, causing several of their colleagues in the hallway to look up in surprise. Usually, it was Noboru who was in the habit of slamming doors, not well-mannered Mamoru Chiba.

"You need to switch to decaf. Besides, we're still sharing an office, so you will be informed about everything that's going on. We just have to make sure that no-one knows about that, right?"

Disgruntled, Mamoru plopped down on his rickety chair. "Fine."

"And you can at least accompany me today, if you want to, the Chief won't mind that."

Snorting, Mamoru looked at this partner. "Why's that? He was quite clear on how he would fire both of us if he caught me working on the case with you."

Noboru scratched his neck, a gesture that screamed discomfort.

"It's Ami's and Makoto Kino's funeral today. And you have every right to be there."

* * *

Ami Mizuno was laid to rest on the same graveyard that already held the remains of Minako Aino. A large group of mourners had assembled, and the priest looked almost lost between all those people. The expensive oak wood casket was almost invisible under the large number of wreaths. Sunflowers, roses, lilies, and oddly enough even some daffodils - all decorated the grave to make it seem like something other than a brutally murdered girl's final resting place.

As far as funerals went, this one was certainly beautiful.

The two inspectors remained behind at a respectful distance, letting the mourners pass them by. The congregation was led by Ami's mother, who was leaning heavenly on Ikuko Tsukino. Neither of them were crying, and they carried their grief with a quiet dignity seldom seen. Looking at Mrs. Mizuno allowed the careful observer a glance into a future that would never be, Noboru thought. Ami and her mother had almost the same face, and now the dead girl would never grow up to notice it.

Next to him, Mamoru inclined his head in greeting when he saw his mother-in-law. Ikuko smiled tersely, and focused on Mrs. Mizuno again, knowing that Mamoru would understand her preoccupation.

Many people came to wish Ami well on her very last journey: friends, family, colleagues, patients, almost everyone was there. Even Usagi's old school friends Umino and Naru were there, and for a brief moment Noboru feared that Naru would make him another scene. But the brunette girl walked past him without sparing him a single look, and Noboru let out a deep breath which formed a small cloud of mist in the chilly air. It was probably wrong to feel relief at a funeral, but there was nothing he could do about that now. Instead, he looked around to see who had not made an appearance. Notably absent were only Ami's father, the reclusive painter, and Rei Hino, the mysterious woman, but then the latter might already be dead, Noboru thought grimly and rubbed his cold nose to warm it a little.

Two hours later, the two inspectors attended another funeral. The graveyard was older than the one they had been to earlier in the day. Some gravestones had already fallen prey to rough wind and cruel rain, making it impossible to read the names of those buried there. Far less people had come to pay Makoto Kino their last respect; no family at all, only colleagues and customers from the café in which she had worked. The grave was small, her casket simple, and there was only one wreath of pink roses, the white bow simply reading: _You will be missed._ Quietly, Noboru pulled out his little notebook and scratched a few words on the yellow pages before sliding it back into the pockets of his jacket. Mamoru had already made his way back to the car, but for some reason, Noboru felt himself quite unable to leave before the last mourner had left the graveyard. He was alone, as alone as he had been when everyone else had bolted from Makoto Kino's smelly bedroom and her decomposing corpse.

"You would have deserved so much more," he muttered. It was only when they were back in their office that he wondered why the woman's death had affected him so much more than that of Ami Mizuno, whom he had at least met before she died.

* * *

Hisaya Nigoshi's flat was still under surveillance, and even after three days, there was no sign of his return. His agency didn't know where he was, but said it was customary for their paparazzi not to check in until they had any pictures to sell. Noboru already knew that the only living family member was Nigoshi's grandmother, who was wasting away in a nursing home, no longer able to remember her own name, let alone her grandson's whereabouts. Haruka insisted on talking to the old woman regardless, and her usual bravado was crumbling when she returned to the police station.

"She doesn't know anything," she said while leaning against the door frame of Mamoru's and Noboru's office. Her own office was further down the hall, it was bigger, less cramped, but also empty and without any colleagues to talk to and there were moments when even a person as brash as Haruka Tenoh yearned for human contact.

Noboru nodded, for once not keen on a fight. His back was hurting like hell, so bad that he was seriously contemplating to ask Mamoru to put some antiseptic ointment on it and anyway, he wasn't the sort of person to kick people while they were down, and right now, Haruka definitely fit into this category. "Dementia?"

Brushing some imaginary flecks of dust from her leather jacket, she nodded. "Yes. Do you have any news?"

"No, I've been to funerals and spoke to a few people there, tried to see if our perp might show up or something like that, you know how the crazies sometimes do that."

"He didn't," Haruka said, not even bothering to raise her intonation to make it sound like a question.

"No, nothing."

"Where's Chiba?"

"Somewhere downtown, talking to used car dealers."  
"Is he okay?" Irked, Noboru frowned and crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Do you really care?"

And just like that, their rare moment of peace was over. Turning on the spot, Haruka marched to her own office, slamming the door as she went.

* * *

Grand theft auto was nothing Mamoru cared about under the best circumstances, and right now, it was certainly not on his list of priorities at all. Still, he had to assuage the chief, so he did a first round of interviews with several car dealers, none of whom had heard of a red Bugatti that was currently being sold. They promised to call him when the offer came, and Mamoru felt he had done his share of crap work for the day. Ami's funeral still clung to his bones, a heaviness he couldn't shake or ban. Seeing Ikuko there had only made it worse: he owed solving this case to so many people, and yet they weren't moving forward at all. No sign of Kaitou Ace, no sign of Rei Hino, not even an appearance of the ghastly Hisaya Nigoshi.

Knowing that it was wrong, his fingers punched Setsuna's number (already memorised in such a short period of time) into his sleek phone and arranged to meet her at her flat. The drive over there did nothing to calm his racing mind, even though he drove far faster than the weather conditions suggested. It was still so cold that he had to turn the heating in his car on full blast, and even then he didn't feel warm. He arrived at Setsuna's home after fifteen minutes, finding a parking space just in front of the house, a small miracle in itself since he usually had to circle the block two to three times.

Setsuna's flat was in a dark and modern tower of glass and chrome right in the city centre, and to Mamoru, it always seemed as if the building reached up right into the sky to pierce heavy clouds cluttered around it. When he had visited her there for the first time, he was surprised to notice that her flat was far more spacious than Minako Aino's had been. It was decorated with several large pieces of modern art, wild shapes of bronze that made no sense whatsoever to Mamoru.

Knocking on her door, he stood a little straighter, and felt his heart beat accelerate. Unlike the other times he was waiting for her to let him in, it didn't feel good.

The door was opened, and he was met with Setsuna's customary intense gaze.

"Hello there." Her voice was already tuned for seduction, low and sweet. Dressed in a red skirt and a tight black shirt, she was once again oozing sex appeal. Her heavy perfume reached his nose, and Mamoru had to suppress a sneeze. Following her into the flat, he was surprised that she led him into a room he hadn't been to before: her kitchen. A small dining table was decorated with a red tablecloth, silver candle sticks, and some doubtlessly delicious food. It might have tempted another man on another day, but all it did was to remind him of the countless dinners Usagi had ruined because she was barely able to make some toast without burning it to ashes. His wife had been the world's worst cook, and still, Mamoru had loved sitting down with her to try the disastrous results of her cooking sessions.

It looked as if Setsuna hadn't ever ruined a dinner: the lasagne looked delicious and the smell was mouth-watering. Still, his voice was gruff, almost unfriendly when he spoke. "What's this?"

"Dinner. I made us some lasagne. Can you open the wine?" She gestured to a bottle on the counter, and even without closer assessment, Mamoru could tell that it was as expensive as it was old. Probably rare, too. What the fuck was he doing here?

"Setsuna..."

She smiled, and put a finger on his lips. "Don't. Let's just enjoy a nice dinner. It's not as if I'm asking you to marry me."

Without thinking, Mamoru answered, ostentatiously holding up his right hand with the wedding band on it. "Good, because as far as I'm concerned, I'm still married to Usagi."  
She blanched at his words, clenching her fists by her side. "If you still feel that way, then what are you doing here?" Her voice was harsher than he had ever heard it, and it was not only the right, but also the only moment to leave.

"I was just asking myself the same thing." Glad that he hadn't shrugged off his jacket yet, Mamoru Chiba turned and walked out without looking back.

* * *

"Give in to me. You know you want to."

"I'd rather not," Noboru moaned and closed his eyes. "You're poison."

"And yet, here you are, in my bed, naked, offering yourself to me."

This time, Noboru didn't have a response. He felt her nails rake his back, dig into his skin like claws, and fought back a scream.

"Pet, you will beg for me before long. You can't be with me, you can't be without me. That's the beauty of the situation."

* * *

Mamoru wasn't sleeping, so the door bell didn't wake him. Peeling himself out of bed, he walked through the hall and peered through the spyhole before opening the door to a weary looking Noboru.

"Tell me it's not another body."

Noboru shook his head. "No, nothing like that."

They went into the kitchen, where Mamoru quietly began to prepare some coffee. It was four in the morning, and whatever had brought his partner here, they would need coffee. The bright kitchen lights hurt Mamoru's tired eyes, and he wished he could just go back to his bed and lie awake in the darkness for another hour or two.

"You have to do me a favour." Something in Noboru's voice was just plain wrong, and it took Mamoru a minute to realise that it was because it was completely devoid of emotion. Abandoning the coffee maker, Mamoru turned to find the other man stripping off his shirt to expose his chest. It looked horrible.

"What the fuck..."

Inching closer, he realised that the red welts were from fingernails, but they were nothing like those that he himself had found on his body after sleeping with Setsuna. Noboru looked positively mutilated. An angry pattern of blood and deep cuts zigzagged across the broad chest, and Mamoru had no doubt that the cuts would scar. Opening his mouth to ask what on earth had happened, he was abruptly silenced by Noboru.

"No questions. And this stays between us."

Shaking his head more to himself than to Noboru, Mamoru went into the bathroom to retrieve his first aid kit. He saw his partner's back when he returned to the kitchen, and it looked even worse than it had last time.

Voice heavy with disapproval, Mamoru sat down and began to dab a cotton ball with antiseptic ointment. "I'm not going to ask any questions, but tell your lady friend that if she keeps this up, you will need to get stitches." To emphasise his assessment, he carefully pressed the cotton ball against Noboru's torn skin.

"She's not my friend, and she's absolutely not a lady. And that fucking hurts."

"It's an open wound," Mamoru said simply and then the two men fell silent.

* * *

**End of Chapter Nine**


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

_**

* * *

**_

After a night with very little sleep, morning found Noboru and Mamoru in their cluttered office. In front of Noboru was a cardboard box with cheap coffee mugs in it: all of them carried the logo of the supermarket that was located just round the corner of the police station.

"What's up with those?" Mamoru asked while nodding in the direction of the mugs.

"They're for the break room."

Frowning, Mamoru looked around in the small room to notice that the dirty crockery that was usually as much a part of their office as the stacks of files and pictures was gone. A quick glance into the rubbish bin told him where their sorry remains had landed.

"What happened to those?"

"I smashed them," Noboru answered in a voice that left no room for questions. It was beginning to turn to an annoying habit, Mamoru thought with more than a little resentment, and busied himself with the car case again. The theft of the Bugatti seemed to be linked to several other cases: a banker who parked his cars in the same multi-storey car park had reported three of his cars as stolen: a Porsche Boxter, a Lotus Evora and a silver Mercedes. The security on the car park was tight, and yet, all the cars had miraculously disappeared in the same night without anyone noticing it. It smelled like an inside job, but despite interviewing the security personel, Mamoru was no closer to solving this case than Noboru and Haruka were to solving the Missing Heart Murders. Grumbling to himself, Mamoru wondered why anyone in their right mind needed three cars, but then again, he was by no means rich and didn't live in the most expensive skyscraper in the whole of Tokyo and perhaps the cars were just a part of having too much money on one's hand. His contemplation was interrupted when their door flew open and Haruka burst in. Her cheeks were coloured with excitement, two patches of red that gave her a more girlish appearance.

"Noboru, downstairs, now!"

Unpacking the cardboard box, Noboru didn't even bother to look up. "What is it?"

"It's Ace. He's in the lobby."

Without wasting a second, Noboru shoved the box aside, and shot ouf his chair, a movement so abrupt that it caused his torn skin to scream in protest. Trying to work through the pain, he hurriedly followed Haruka out of the door.

Behind his desk, Mamoru was left alone, frustration seeping into his bones.

* * *

The lobby was filled with people. Flashbulbs went off and microphones were held out, all centered on the figure of Minako Aino's infamous lover: Kaitou Ace. The assembled press was silent, hanging on his every word. This was a man who clearly relished the spotlight.

His clear voice easily carried into the hallways of the station, and the assembled people were quiet so as to catch his every word. Noboru and Haruka pushed their way through the crowd until they were almost face to face with him. Dressed to the nines in designer jeans, a white t-shirt with a band logo on it and a well-tailored black blazer, the blonde was ready to charm the masses.

"Of course, I did not kill Minako. I loved her, I truly did." He paused for a moment, and gulped. It looked a little over the top to Noboru. "She was a star, the brightest and most brilliant of them all, and the world has lost a little bit of its beauty with her death. I will subject myself to the police's questioning now, and I expect my name to be cleared within the hour." He shot the photographers a winning, but appropriately sad smile, and then offered his wrists to the two inspectors as if he expected them to handcuff him immediately.

Knowing that the media would just eat that up, Noboru instead jerked his head to indicate that Ace should follow him, leaving Haruka to deal with the press. He hated how the man treated this situation as if it were a play he was in. Ace was silent while being lead into the interrogation room, but he was smiling, and his relaxed state unnerved Noboru. Either he was innocent, and therefore sure that he would indeed be allowed to go home again, or he was flat out crazy.

"Mr. Ace, I will be with you shortly. Do you want a solicitor present while we question you?"

"No, I have nothing to hide." Another wide smile followed that statement, and Noboru decided that Ace definitely belonged in the crazy category.

Haruka was waiting for him outside the room, and beneath her arrogant demeanour, it was easy to tell that she was practically giddy with excitement. "I will go in and speak with him first, you can have your pick later."

Remembering how effortless it was to work with Mamoru, Noboru sighed. God, he really wanted his old partner back. "No, this won't do. We're both going in."

Haruka pressed her lips into a thin line, and it was so evident that she was just searching for something that would put Noboru on the sideline that it was almost laughable. "You'll just scare him," she finally bit out.

Snorting, Noboru retaliated. "And you won't?"

It was then that the chief arrived. The older man interrupted the argument before it really began. "Stop it. Have you sent someone in to take his fingerprints and a sample of hair for the DNA analysis?"

"Not yet," Noboru admitted sheepishly and beckoned the uniformed man closest to him to do so, who followed the silent order immediately.

"I'll be watching from next door," the Chief stated with another pointed look at his two inspectors and disappeared.

The interrogation room was bleak. Grey walls, a mirror that doubled as a one-way window from the other side, one desk, two chairs. Ace sat on one chair, Haruka on the other. Noboru was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed in front of his chest. The female inspector began the interrogation, her voice clear, cutting and precise.

"State your name, age, and profession."

"Kaitou Ace, 29, and I'm an actor." The note of pride in his voice was unmistakable.

"Describe your relationship to Minako Aino at the time of her death."

"She was my fiancée."

Haruka pretended to consult her notes, a movement that also served to hide her surprise. "I have no record of this, neither her manager nor her parents made any statements regarding an engagement. Can you explain this?"

"Setsuna was just an employee, Minako wouldn't share her personal life with her. And we were going to tell her parents at New Year's Eve, we had a big party planned for the happy occasion." Ace looked down at his hands as if in silent contemplation of the deceased singer and his destroyed future with her.

Thinking that Minako Aino would rather throw herself under a lorry than spend New Year's in the vicinity of her mother, Noboru resisted the urge to shake his head. There was something fishy about Kaitou Ace: the man was just putting it on too thick.

Haruka leaned back in her chair, seemingly at ease. "A friend of Miss Aino's, a certain Hisaya Nigoshi, reported that your affair was merely physical and that she had broken up with long before she was murdered."

Ace leaned forward, an intense glare in his blue eyes. "That's a lie." Noboru noted the intensity of the reaction, and mentally filed it away for later consideration.

Haruka switched tactics, it wouldn't do to get him all worked up before they had even covered the most basic facts. "Can you describe the engagement ring you gave to Miss Aino?"

"Of course, it is a six-carat pear-shaped pink diamond ring."

Not bothering to hide her disbelief, Haruka looked at Noboru, who was leaning against the wall on her right side. "How much does that cost?"

Noboru answered immediately, his voice carefully neutral. "Something close to 3,500,000 Yen."

Snorting, she turned back to Ace. "And you were able to afford that how? Did I miss the last big blockbuster you were in?"

"It is a family heirloom."

"No such ring was found in Miss Aino's flat."

"Well, then the murderer must have taken it with him."

"Speaking of which: where were you on Nov 3rd?"

"In my flat, I was preparing for an audition."

"Any witnesses to that?"

"No, I was alone."

"Of course you were. Perhaps a neighbour that heard you practice?"

Ace tipped his index finger against his chin. "Perhaps, but I tend to speak very low while practising to save my voice."

Rolling her eyes back, Haruka let out a snort and changed her angle. "Why did it take you so long to come forward? It's been over three weeks."

"I had to come to terms with the loss first. I was completely devastated, and I'm not ashamed to confess that I turned to drugs to numb the pain."

Noboru chose this moment to cut in and threw the group photograph of the girls on the table. "Can you identify the girls in the picture?"

Ace picked it up and looked at it closely. "No."

"They were Minako Aino's best friends, and you as her husband-to-be don't know them?" Noboru felt a bit hypocritical then; Mamoru had also not known his late wife's friends.

Sighing dramatically, Ace answered. "Inspector, a relationship is based on trust, not on control. Minako knew that she didn't need to tell me everything right away. Our connection was deep, and we didn't need many other people in our life together."

Haruka took over again. "We're you exclusive?"

"I thought we were, but then my beloved was a free spirit."

"So there might have been others?"

"Possibly. But I was the only one she always loved."

"But it must have made you very mad if she carried on with other men beside you. You were engaged to be married."

"I accepted her for who she was. Art requires sacrifices."

"Art? What art?"

"Her singing."

", she was a pop star. It was all very commercial, I don't see much art in flashing your legs while lip-synching."

"You wouldn't understand." Feeling that the interrogation had turned into a dead-end, Noboru produced another picture and threw it on the table. It was the paparazzi shot.

"Did you know you were being photographed?" he asked and watched the suspect closely.

"Not until I saw one of those pictures in the newspapers after her death."

"Are you sure? Because she knew that a photographer was there, look at this picture, she's looking right into the camera. Sure you didn't notice anything."

"I'm sure," Ace bit out and shoved the offensive pictures away from him. Disdain was etched into his face, and it was the second negative reaction he had displayed so far. It was something to go on. Noboru hoped that the cameras in the interrogation room had captured this reaction, he wanted to show it to Mamoru later on. Pushing his chair a bit back, Ace put some distance between himself and the picture, the smile not returning to his face.

Behind the one-way mirror, the chief was watching the interview unfold. He knocked on the window, and the inspectors left the room. They met in the hallway. Noboru raised a hand to his head, but stopped when the raw wounds on his back screamed in protest.

"He's a lunatic, no doubt about that. I don't believe that Minako and he were engaged."

Haruka smirked. "The engagement ring he described is J-Lo's. Family heirloom, my arse."

The chief nodded. "Ask him whether he has alibis for the other murders."

"We can certainly do that with regards to Usagi Chiba and Ami Mizuno, but we only have a very rough estimate of Makoto Kino's time of death."

"Perhaps her colleagues can tell her when she went missing?" the chief offered, but Noboru cut across him. "She had taken her holiday, all of it, it's why she wasn't reported missing. Her colleagues thought she was visiting some friends."

"That's not good. What did the coroner say?"

"Hanzo says that when we found her, she was dead for about a month, give or take a week. Combined with the information of when she took her holiday, we can narrow it down a bit, but it's still a frame of four days. We'll check his alibis -if he even has any - for all of them."

The Chief looked at the non-descript door leading to the interrogation room. "Go get a search warrant for his flat."

Haruka nodded, and got on it immediately.

* * *

In the break room, Mamoru put the new coffee mugs into the cabinets.

"So I heard that Kaitou Ace came in today?"

Mamoru turned around, not even suprised to find Katsurou Hanzo in the door way. The coroner was just shrugging out of his trench, and he was soaked to the bones despite the umbrella he had propped up against the wall. A small part of Mamoru was actually surprised that Hanzo didn't just repel rain by force of will. Smiling hesitantly, he inclined his head in greeting before answering.

"Yeah, Noboru and Tenoh are interrogating him as we speak."

"You're not back on the case?"

Mamoru's face clouded over, and he twisted the coffee mug in his hands. "No."

"Well, the last word may not have been spoken on the matter."

"Do you know anything about the murder weapon?"

A ghost of a smile flittered across the coroner's features. "I don't think I'm supposed to tell you, but no. I have no idea what sort of weaponry was used to cut the victims open. I've even spoken with the university and the military, asking for an update of the latest advances in laser technology, but they couldn't tell me anything that would explain how the perpetrator burned holes into women."

"That's bad."

Katsurou raised one silver brow, his voice dry. "Thank you."

"I didn't mean it like that!" Mamoru hurried to add, but Katsurou had already picked up his umbrella and trench coat again. "I have to get back to work. Stop by sometime if you wish."

* * *

Still waiting for Haruka to return from court, Noboru was observing Kaitou Ace through the one-way window. The suspect was completely quiet, only occasionally looking at his nails as if he wanted to see whether he needed a manicure again. He had come to them on their own volition, but only after weeks of a more or less fruitless search. Where had he hidden from them? His flat had been under surveillance from the minute Nigoshi had identified him, but Ace hadn't been seen by anyone. Perhaps he had a secret hideout somewhere, and perhaps this is where Rei Hino was, dead or alive. Only that Noboru was sure that Ace wasn't their guy. Just as it had been with Hisaya Nigoshi, his instincts told him that while Kaitou Ace was crazy, he was not the one who had killed all those girls. He lacked the intelligence, the foresight, the brains. Perhaps the time would have come when Ace would have killed Minako Aino, but someone had done it before Ace's madness could manifest into something more solid and dangerous. Still, there was more to Ace than met the eye, and Noboru was sure that he had some valuable information hidden in the recesses of his mind. He stepped into the hallway and entered the interrogation room again, fully aware that it was not exactly the most collegial thing to do without his new partner by his side.

", I have some further questions for you."

"Of course," Ace answered pleasantly.

Noboru smiled, and put two further pictures on the table. They were the ones they had found in the secret drawer, showing Mamoru and the mystery blonde man.

"Do you know who these men are?"

Ace barely acknowledged the picture of Mamoru. "I've never seen him."

Feeling his heartbeat accelerate, Noboru tapped his fingers on the other picture. "What about him?"

Ace crossed his arms. "I don't know, I met many people."

"Perhaps he was a friend of Miss Aino's?"

"As I've said, I don't know."

Nodding, Noboru took the pictures back. "I don't mean to be disrespectful, Mr. Ace, but you surely understand that I have to ask this." He made a little pause to establish eye contact. Building rapport was everything now. "Do you think that this man in the picture might have been...?" Noboru then looked to his feet, making himself feel sheepish even though he was anything but.

The suspect took the bait."A lover?"

Noboru shrugged, quietly cursing himself immediately. He should just stop moving altogether for a day or two to give his skin some time to heal.

"I wouldn't know that, would I, Inspector Sanjoin?"

"You were her fiance. I don't think that there was much that got by." The flattery was careful, but it did the trick.

"I saw him leaving her apartment building once or twice. Can't tell whether he was visiting her, of course."

"Of course."

Noboru excused himself again, and hurried down the hallway to send a copy of the picture to the techs. If he was really lucky, they might find the mystery blonde through facial recognition software. Beckoning a constable to come over, he handed him the picture and sent him to Aino's neighbourhood to ask around a little bit.

* * *

The afternoon dragged on, and Mamoru couldn't remember the last time he had been this frustrated and bored. He had even stooped so low as to tidy up their office: the bins were now flowing over with old files, and not for the first time did Mamoru wish for a shredder. His phone showed three missed calls, all from the same and very familiar mobile number, but Mamoru wasn't in the mood to talk to Setsuna today. Or tomorrow, come to think of it.

Noboru returned to their office just as Mamoru prepared to leave for the day.

"Huh. What happened here?"

"I threw some old stuff out. How did the interrogation go?"

"Ace is crazy, that man has deluded himself into thinking that he was engaged to Aino. He doesn't have an alibi for any of the murders but Usagi's. He was in Kawasaki for that time, appearing in a small play five nights in a row. I already checked back with the theatre, they confirmed it."

Strangely torn between being relieved and disappointed, Mamoru leaned against the large crime board they had shoved against a wall. Behind him, portraits of all the victims stared into the room. "What do you think? Guilty?"

Noboru shook his head.

"No. But he knows something that he's not telling us."

"You think he might know the murderer?"

"Uh huh."

"I spoke to Hanzo today: no news on the weapon."

"Well, fuck."

"I know."

Silence settled over them, but none of them made a move to leave. Eventually, Mamoru reached into his jacket and pulled out a small tube of lotion, throwing it to Noboru, who managed to catch it with a pained groan.

"This should help with your back."

Noboru turned the tube over in his fingers, not meeting Mamoru's eyes. He nodded, more to himself than to Mamoru.

Trying to break through the tension, Mamoru pushed his hands deep into his pockets. "Wanna go get a beer?"

A sad smile hushed over Noboru's face before he brushed over it and slapped Mamoru on the back as he made his way out of the room. "I can't, sorry. There's something I have to take care off."

* * *

"So, back again." She was staying in a filthy hotel room, and when she opened the thin door to him, Beryl was already naked. Her skin was white, but her eyes were dark. Noboru tried to root himself in the reality of his job: he needed to end this, he needed to function, and for that, he needed to leave her behind. Only that he couldn't leave her without understanding what made him seek her out in the first place. Throwing a quick look over his shoulder, he entered. The hammering rain had soaked his clothes, and the added weight tugging on his frame was an unpleasant sensation.

Beryl closed the behind him and ran a hand through his wet curls, tugging her nails into his skull. Once again, she broke the skin.

Breaking away from her with a disgusted expression, he walked to the window. Distance was everything, he had to keep a cool head.

Pained, he looked at her."What is it that draws me to you?" The desperation in his voice made her laugh; it was a mirthless sound, a distorted echo of a real laugh, a mere farce in this twisted room of torture.

"Darkness. Memories. Pain. You want all of that, and only I can give it you." She was next to him in an instant, and ran a hand over his chest. "Only I, Noboru. Only I."

Despite himself, he leaned in and stayed, hating himself a little more with every passing second.

When he left hours later, he found himself driving aimlessly through the rainy night, the sound of the drops hitting the car's roof the only sound he could bear. In his head, he was still screaming.

* * *

**End of Chapter Ten**


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven**

_**

* * *

**_

The call came at seven thirty in the morning.

Hisaya Nigoshi's landlord called the police to let me them know that the tenants renting the flat under Nigoshi's had reported an odd black stain on their ceiling. It might be a broken pipe, it might be something altogether different, but since Nigoshi had been officially reported missing yesterday, the landlord had called the police immediately.

Since Noboru was still nowhere to be seen, it was only Haruka and a constable that drove the short distance through the crisp Tokyo morning. When they arrived at the building, the landlord and several of Nigoshi's neighbours were already waiting despite the early hour. Their faces were curious and worried, their voices hushed but buzzing, and the overall atmosphere reminded Haruka of the countless traffic accidents she had seen back when she was a patrol cop. There had always been useless bystanders, satisfying their own curiosity rather than helping the hurt passengers out of wrecked cars. The whispers muted when she walked past, but she could still hear them gossiping about the scandalous life of the young man in 23B. More than once, the name Minako Aino reached her ears, and she made a mental note to ask around after she'd been in the flat. However useful to her, the misplaced sensationalism nevertheless made Haruka angry. Throwing the neighbours a few dark looks, she strode over to the end of hall where Nigoshi's flat was located. The landlord - a middle-aged man with a pot belly and too much cologne on - handed her a greasy key, and immediately fled from the hall, mumbling that the police could find him in his own flat on the groundfloor if they needed him. Not bothering to hide her distain, Haruka muttered a few choice words and pushed the key into the lock.

* * *

The lift pinged, and Noboru stepped out into the hallway that was now dominated by uniformed policemen. Haruka's call had reached him while he was under the shower, and his hair was still wet, leaving little drops of water on his black leather jacket. It seemed like just yesterday that he and Mamoru had been here to ask about the red notebook, a still missing piece from a puzzle that was getting more complex by the minute. Hisaya Nigoshi had been a strange man, a dangerous man, and now he was a dead man, and if Haruka was to be believed, his end had not been easy.

Nodding to Haruka, who was standing outside the door to Nigoshi's flat and busy briefing a few constables for interviews with the neighbours, he moved past her and stepped through the familiar door, the acrid smell already telling him more than he wanted to know.

What he saw however was worse than anything he could have imagined. Even after having seen the dead and mutilated bodies of Minako Aino, Ami Mizuno and even Makoto Kino, and after having stared at pictures of the respective crime scenes for hours, this was different. He felt himself growing cold, ice enveloping his heart and his mind.

Hisaya Nigoshi was tied to a wooden chair which stood in a large puddle of the man's own blood, vomit and feces.

The forensic team and the police photographer were already at work, having arrived at the scene only ten minutes after Haruka's call. At first, Haruka had thought that it was impossible that no-one should have heard anything suspicious, after all Nigoshi had been viciously tortured to death. It was only when Katsurou Hanzo arrived to take a first look at the victim that it all began to make sense. His tongue had been cut out.

Without preamble, bile rose in Noboru's throat and he reached for the wall to steady him. Something inside him snapped. He didn't notice the Chief stepping into the room and stepping beside him.

"Do you think it was the same perp?" Noboru's fingers curled, digging into the tapestry until slowly, his nails began to break. From the distance, Noboru could hear a familiar voice calling out to him, but the words to come together in his mind.

"Sanjoin? Are you okay? Sanjoin?"

His mind buzzing, Noboru began to walk out of the room backwards, slow and uncertain, tripping over his own feet until he hit the hallway's wall. Ignoring Haruka's perplexed command to stay and the chief's worried voice, he instead slowly turned and walked down the hall, past the lift and towards the staircase, each step faster than the one before until he was running down the stairs as fast as his shaking legs would carry him.

"SANJOIN! WHER ARE YOU GOING?"

But no call and no shout could cause Noboru to stop running. It wasn't the fact that Nigoshi was dead, it was how he had died. Bursting through the building's frontdoor, Noboru gulped in the morning's fresh air, but the oxygen didn't reach his lungs. He was drowning in fear, wishing with all he had that he had never seen the dead man on the chair. The dead man with bloody welts all over his body. Angry welts. Deep welts. Welts too much like the ones burning holes into his skin right now.

Somewhere down the street, a woman laughed and disappeared around a corner.

* * *

At the same time, a young constable raced into Mamoru's office, also almost tripping over his feet. He was young and eager, hoping that DI Chiba would take him along if he only delivered the news fast enough.

"DI Chiba?"

Mamoru looked up from his files, grateful for the distraction. The car case was still going nowhere, not that he put too much effort into it.

"Yes?"

"We just got a call, a walker found a body in the Hikawa Shrine. Can you go over and look at it? DI Tenoh and DI Sanjoin are at a crime scene, so is the Chief, and it's urgent."

Mamoru looked at the constable, mouth slightly agape.

"DI Chiba?"

"Did you say the Hikawa Shrine?" Shaking his head, Mamoru shot out of his chair, grabbing his jacket and the keys to his car. "I'm on my way."

"Do you want me to come?"

Turning and running backwards, Mamoru shook his head. "No, call DI Sanjoin and tell him where I'm going. Thanks, Constable!"

And with that, Mamoru rushed out, worrying and dreading that he would finally meet the most mysterious of his wife's friend, the elusive Rei Hino.

* * *

Jirou Koutani was worried.

He knew that his life was anything but normal, he had accepted this fact a long time ago, but these days, it was beginning to get a bit too much. After having woken from refreshing nine hours of deepest dreamless sleep (thanks to the pills his psychiatrist had prescribed him), he had put on his hiking boots and set out into the cold but sunny morning. Hiking around in the small woods in and around Tokyo was his hobby, it calmed his nerves and allowed him to be in peace for a little while. Under the green canopies, no painful thoughts or disconcerting memories could reach him. At some point, without noticing that he did it, he had stepped off the path he had chosen for the day. On and on he walked, one step at a time, his mind on shutdown. Only when the trees thinned and he suddenly found himself on the edge of the woods, looking at the deserted temple in front of him, did he realise that his mind had gone on autopilot.

Not knowing what had lead him here, but being very well aware of the fact that his final destination had not been reached and that in his life, there were no such things as coincidences, he approached the building, registering the mould on the damp walls, the mice rushing around and the worms slowly crawling through the rotting wood. It was a dead place, inhabited by dead things and dead thoughts. Despite his warm jacket, goosebumps danced over his skin.

It was then that he heard the music. A sweet and slow ballad, sung by a voice he was painfully familiar with. He hadn't listened to any of Minako's songs since her murder, but there was no mistaking the sound of her voice. He had heard it so many times, he would recognise it everywhere. Feeling his heart speed up, Jirou took a deep breath and pushed the thin door open.

A dead girl dangled from the ceiling, her rotting body in a wedding dress slowly twisting round and round. Her ever-growing nails had caused the seams at the tips of her white gloves to burst, and where should have been her heart was a hole as black as her hair.

Without taking his eyes off the corpse, he reached for his mobile, dialled the number ingrained in all children from an early age onwards, and once the operator answered his call, said quite clearly:

"My name is Jirou Koutani, and I would like to report a murder."

* * *

Twenty minutes later, hurried footfalls and a siren told him that the police arrived. Tearing his eyes from the dead girl, Jirou stepped outside the shrine. The sound of Minako's voice was still ringing in his ears, and he wiped some stray tears from his eyes. This was not the moment to cry, he thought to himself and steadily walked towards the tall black-haired man that was hurrying up the stairs and towards him. He was still too far away to see his face, but even soon, Jirou felt himself growing warm again.

"Are you Jirou Koutani?" the man shouted from a distance without breaking his stride."Did you call the station?"

Jirou nodded, and lifted the phone he was still holding in his right hand as if it explained everything.

"I'm Detective Inspector Chiba from the Homicide Division." The inspector came to stop in front of him, outstretching his hand for a greeting before letting it drop to his side again. Recognition flitted over the man's face, and Jirou gulped. It wasn't supposed to happen like this.

"Wait. I know your face."

"I don't think we've met yet, Inspector."

Mamoru shook his head. Images that made no sense were being pushed through his mind like the sun through clouds, but Mamoru stubbornly shoved them aside until only one from his own memories remained.

Looking into Jirou's eerily familiar blue eyes, the piece fell into place, and Mamoru reached for his gun.

One secret drawer, three pictures: The murdered girls, himself with the caption Endymion on the back, and finally, a blonde man that wasn't Kaitou Ace.

"Mr. Koutani, how exactly do you know Minako Aino?"

A sad smile tugged at the corner's of Koutani's mouth. "Inspector, you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

* * *

**End of Chapter 11.**


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

**

* * *

**

There were a number of things one could do when trying to distract oneself. Some people cleaned their homes, others spent time with their spouses and not a few lost themselves in physical exercise. For Noboru Sanjoin, walking around in graveyards did the trick. He had headed to Ami Mizuno's grave first, and the fresh flowers on the ground told him that her mother came here every day to remember the child she'd lost. A small candle was burning, shining a light for the deceased girl.

He spent an hour staring at the flowers, at the whiteness of the petals on the green ground, at the small tombstone that read "Ami Mizuno – most beloved daughter". Noboru was sure that somewhere in the city Haruka and the Chief were staring at Hisaya Nigoshi's body, talking to neighbours, leaving no stone unturned to find the photographer's murderer, when Noboru could have easily told them who had done it.

Instead, his feet carried him to Minako Aino's grave, and since the graveyard wasn't a big one, he soon found himself scrutinising the life-sized white marble angel Aino's parents had chosen for their estranged daughter's final resting place. The statue was designed in the singer's likeness, but whoever Aino had been, she certainly hadn't been an angel. From his conversations with Mrs. Aino, Noboru could tell that her daughter had been a stranger to the bitter woman, they had hardly ever spoken, and Minako had never bothered to share her success with her family. Had Mrs. Aino known and loved her child regardless, the gravestone would have been a different one. The image of Minako kneeling in front of Kaitou Ace resurfaced in Noboru's mind, and for the first time, he realised how lonely she must have been. Kaitou Ace was hardly good company, there was something so fundamentally wrong with him that only a really desperate person could take pleasure in having him around. As the morning turned into afternoon, Noboru remained at Minako Aino's burial place and couldn't help but feel that the fresh white carnations on Ami Mizuno's grave were worth more than all the marble in the world.

Feeling his fingers grow numb from the cold, Noboru rubbed his hands together, wondering why he never remember to wear gloves in winter. It was the same with Mamoru, Noboru thought with a wry smile. His partner still wasn't used to not having his wife there to take care of him: his hair was always just a tad too long, his shoes never as polished as some of the married officers', and his gloves spent most of the winter forgotten about on his kitchen table. More than once Noboru that pondered whether not having a grave for Usagi made things harder for Mamoru. Would it help him to have a place where he could put down some flowers for his wife? But fate had been cruel, and the fire had taken all of Usagi away, leaving Mamoru with nothing but his grief.  
If you wanted to visit Usagi Chiba's grave, all you had to do was look in the eyes of her husband.

The day progressed, the sun moved westwards on the horizon, and the temperatures dropped below zero. Noboru finally walked back to the parking lot and climbed in his car, but he would not return to the reality of Nigoshi's death just now. There was another grave to visit, another girl to remember. Driving kept his thoughts from the smelly flat he had fled from hours ago, and the only image he allowed to press down on his heart was the smiling face of Makoto Kino, who was so pretty before her killer had burnt beyond recognition. After a drive that was shorter than he would have liked, Noboru arrived at his destination.

Leaving his phone on the passenger seat (there were more missed calls than he cared to count), he headed out and walked down the familiar path to Makoto Kino's grave. The girl's final resting place was almost bare, a simple patch of frost-covered green in the later afternoon sun. Since there were no relatives and Makoto Kino didn't have much money in the bank, a tombstone simply hadn't been in the realm of possibilities. The wreath of pink roses her colleagues had put on her grave during the funeral was still there, but the delicate flowers had lost both their colour and their beauty. They were dry and dead, a sad reminder that time moved on ruthlessly, and that sometimes, people were too busy to remember the ones that had passed away too soon.

Staring down at the withered flowers, Noboru realised that Makoto Kino and he were very much alike. If he died, there would be no family to insist on a flashy tombstone or to put fresh flowers on his grave. There were only colleagues, people who admired him for his sharp mind and liked him for his barking laugh. Would they come to his grave to mourn him after the funeral? Would they take the time out of their busy days to remember him? Shoving his hands deeper into his pockets, he thought of Mamoru. He was his partner, and certainly his friend. But Noboru didn't want the young widower to be burdened with being the only person to mourn him while staring down at an unmarked grave. A wild gush of wind rushed past and pressed his leather jacket into his back. When the fabric of his shirt touched his wounds, and the pain shot up like a beacon in the sky, he was finally forced to think of the person he'd been running from all day.

Was there anyone to mourn Hisaya Nigoshi? When his mutilated body would be released after the autopsy, would there be anyone to claim him? A father, a sister, a wife? Deep down, Noboru knew this wasn't the case. The young man he had seen on the cold winter morning a few weeks ago had been a loner, both before and after his mysterious transformation from worried and meek to snide and dangerous. There was no doubt in his mind as to who had killed Nigoshi; the tell-tale scratches and welts were the only answer he needed. Beryl had killed Nigoshi, he just didn't know why. But did that mean that Beryl had also slain the girls whose graves he had just visited?

* * *

The Hikawa shrine was now firmly in the hands of the homicide division.

Haruka Tenoh had rushed over from Nigoshi's flat, the Chief and Katsurou Hanzo in tow. Mamoru was more than a little surprised that he couldn't make out Noboru's tall form among the hurried policemen, but he had other things to worry about right now. Haruka had never seen the picture of Jirou Koutani Aino had kept hidden in her secret drawer, just as she hadn't been told about the picture of himself with Endymion scribbled on the back. It was for this reason, and for this reason alone that Jirou Koutani was now treated as a witness rather than a suspect by Haruka and the Chief, and Mamoru wondered whether it was too late to tell them about the secret drawer and its mysterious content. Jirou Koutani's statement had just been taken by Haruka, who had now hurried back into the temple to re-examine the crime scene. A young Constable rushed out, almost knocked her down and then disappeared into the woods in a hurried frenzy, no doubt to find a less public place to empty his stomach. Mamoru had only thrown one glance at the body, but even so, he doubted that he could ever forget what he had seen. The location, the black hair and Minako Aino's music left him with no doubt that Rei Hino had finally been found.

Someone had turned the stereo playing Aino's songs off, and for the first few moments, the sudden absence of her voice made the silence of the temple deafening. Fearing he had lost his touch, Mamoru angrily turned around to focus on the man who was the source of all this trouble. Koutani was standing opposite him, as still as a statue, his hand still clutching the red mobile phone, his feet firmly on the ground. His face was ashen, but his eyes betrayed him. They were wide and alert, convincing Mamoru that Jirou was nowhere as shocked as he had made it sound when giving his statement.

"Mr. Koutani, I will need a hair sample and finger prints."

Frowning, Jirou kept staring over Mamoru's shoulder, his eyes firmly fastened on the temple as if he was waiting for someone. "Why? Your partner didn't say anything about that. In fact, she told me that I'm free to go home now."

"I need them because you are linked to two victims in a murder investigation, that's why."

"If you want to know how I came to know Minako, then let's get out of here, and I'll tell you. And perhaps then you can tell me why you are aware of my relationship to Minako when your colleague DI Tenoh is clearly not."

Trying to regain the ground he hadn't even been aware of losing, Mamoru's voice took on an edge. "We will not be leaving this premises unless you've told me what I want to know."

The shrewd look Jirou threw him was like a kick in the gut. It was like interrogating Hisaya Nigoshi all over again. "DI Chiba, you don't want what I have to say on record somewhere. Believe me."

For the first time, Mamoru felt that all the answers he was looking for were right there in front of him, with only Jirou Koutani as their secret keeper. "Why did Aino write Endymion on that picture of me? What does it mean?" Mamoru eventually burst out, blood rushing to his head and fear settling in his stomach like lead. He thought of his wife, and suddenly wondered whether she had only died because of something he had unwittingly done. Was Endymion a code for something else?

"Not here," Jirou answered quietly, and focused his attention on the temple once more.

It was then that Katsurou Hanzo stepped out, the wind tugging at his trench coat. Jirou's eyes widened, and Mamoru turned around to follow the man's look. Hanzo met Mamoru's eyes and inclined his head in greeting before making his way over to the two men. "If you want to talk, then the guy with the silver hair should come with us," Jirou said, his voice somewhat incredulous.  
Mamoru narrowed his eyes. "How do you know Hanzo?"

"I don't."  
"Then why should he come with us?"  
"I told you, I'm not answering any of your questions here. I found a dead girl, I reported it immediately, I made my statement, and that's all I have to say to you in your capacity of a copper. But there are things I can tell you in a private setting, and those things concern the silver guy as well."

"I could force you to talk to me. I could put you under arrest."

The blonde man looked at Mamoru, pity and amusement mingling in his blue eyes. "You really have no idea what you can or can't make me do."

Katsurou was only a few steps away, and Mamoru knew he had to make a decision now. Katsurou had seen the pictures, he would recognise Jirou Koutani immediately and unless he acted fast, that meant an arrest cell for Koutani, an interrogated led by Haruka, and himself once again put on the sidelines, damned to waste his time by looking for some stupid stolen cars.

"Do you know who killed the victims?"

"Yes."

"Was it you?"

"No."

Mamoru stared into Koutani's eyes, and his decision was made.

It was then that Katsurou reached them, pulling a pair of rubber gloves off and putting them in a pocket of his trench. Before he got the chance to introduce himself to Jirou, Mamoru motioned to follow him, and the coroner and the inspector walked until they were no longer in hearing distance of the other man.

"Katsurou, that guy over there is Jirou Koutani. He knew Aino."

The coroner looked at Jirou, and then nodded. "I'll go get the Chief," he said, his quiet efficiency once again on display.

Mamoru shook his head. "No. The Chief doesn't know about the secret drawer yet, and there is something Koutani wants to tells us. You and me, off the record. We won't get him to talk in the police station, so let's play along."

"Are you sure that's wise, Mamoru?"

Before Mamoru could respond, Jirou walked over and interrupted them.

"I know that the two of you always talk among yourselves, but this isn't the right time for it. There is another girl out there, and she is in a lot of danger, so really, you don't have time to weigh the pros and cons of dragging me to the police station."

Katsurou's voice went icy. "Am I to understand this as a threat?"

Jirou rolled his eyes. "No, because a) I'm not stupid, and b) you're tall. So, ready to go?"

Katsurou raised one eye brow. "Anything else that is completely against the rules of our profession that you want us to do for you?"

Jirou smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Yes. We'll have to stop by Minako's flat on the way to pick up her notebook."

* * *

The afternoon was drawing to a close, and taking the sunlight with it. Tonight, there would be no stars visible on the firmament; thick clouds covered the sky like a dirty old blanket. Noboru had driven past the motel in which Beryl was staying, but there was no light in her windows. He didn't dare to get out of the safety of his car to check whether she was still there. She was a monster, a most cruel murderer, and yet, he could feel himself pulled towards her. Gripping the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles turned white, he hit the accelerator and drove off. He wouldn't end up like Hisaya Nigoshi, dead in a puddle of his own blood. The time for hesitation was past.

* * *

It had taken them a while to get from the shrine to the city centre, and the hour stuck in the typical Tokyo rush hour traffic was one of the most uncomfortable of Jirou's life. He had been forced to take the back seat, and every once in a while, he caught Hanzo staring holes into him in the rearview mirror. Finally, the coroner pulled over and parked his car in front of the shabby building. The sun was setting, and as the street lights flashed to life, Jirou narrowed his eyes. "This is not Minako's house."

"No, but this is where the notebook is," Mamoru answered and got out, the coroner following on his heels.

The three of them walked into the house, and headed towards the small lift. Jirou was still frowning when they entered it. "Where exactly are we?"

"This is where Hisaya Nigoshi lives, a friend of Aino's," Mamoru answered tensely.

Katsurou pushed the button with the number 4 on it, and the lift set into motion. "Lived, Mamoru. We recovered his body from his flat a few hours ago. I thought Sanjoin would have informed you, he was here." After a second of hesitation, he added: "At least briefly."

Mamoru almost doubled over, surprise and shock taking a hold of him. "Nigoshi is dead? How?"

"He was tortured to death."

Jirou leaned against the wall, and wished for air. The lift seemed to get smaller with each passing second. "That's not good, that's just not good."

Finally, they arrived on the fourth floor, which was deserted save for a lone Constable guarding the door to Nigoshi's flat.

Mamoru greeted him. "Constable."

The younger man smiled. "DI Chiba, Dr. Hanzo. DI Sanjoin got here a few minutes ago, he's already inside."

When Mamoru, Katsurou and Jirou entered the small apartment, they found Noboru sitting on the chair that had held the body of Nigoshi a few hours earlier. Open in his hands was the red notebook.

"Please tell me that this holds all the answer we need," Mamoru said, causing Noboru to look up.

Smiling grimly, Noboru shook his head. "Sorry, mate. We're back to square one."

* * *

**END of Chapter Twelve.**


	13. Interlude

**The Interlude**

_

* * *

_

_Diary of Minako Aino_

May 18th, 2008

Starting a diary, which feels silly, but I need to organise my thoughts a bit better. Recorded a new song today, and Setsuna is sure that it will sell even better than the last single. She wants to schedule the video shoot for as soon as possible.

* * *

May 21st, 2009

It's Usagi's wedding day today. I didn't sent a card, but then she's a bit odd about me meeting her husband anyway.

* * *

June 3rd, 2008

Usagi and I got into a fight about Rei. There is something wrong with her, she is so distant lately, and yesterday, I caught her talking to herself when I stopped by the shrine unannounced. Ever since her grandfather died and she closed the shrine to the public, she has become a different person. All she does day in day out is sitting in front of the holy fire and brushing those stupid steps. That's not a life! I think she needs psychological help as soon as possible, but Usagi wants to try talking to her first. Usagi has now left the record studio, and she was really angry with me for suggesting that we need to have Rei committed. I love Usa, but she can be so naive sometimes. Nevertheless, I will have to continue recording the new album, otherwise the record company will kill me...

* * *

June 4th, 2008

Usagi is dead. I just can't believe it. Usagi is dead. I stopped the recording to follow her home, but when I got there, her house was in flames and the fire-fighters were all over the place. They told me that there was no way anyone could have escaped from it. Usagi. My sweet sweet Usagi.

* * *

June 5th, 2008

Ami, Mako and I are heading to the countryside for the weekend. I hope Rei will come too, we can't deal with this alone. I miss Usagi.

* * *

June 12th, 2008

I tried calling Rei, but she doesn't answer her phone. Mako went to the shrine, but she wasn't there. I haven't told the girls, but I'm afraid that she was in the house with Usagi. I couldn't stand it if it were true. Rei has to be alive, somewhere. She just has to.

* * *

June 29th, 2008

Had a strange dream last night, I only remember that Usagi's husband was in it, and that Usagi was calling him Endymion. Weird. He has always creeped me out, there's something strange about him.

Still no word on Rei. I think... I think she's dead.

* * *

June 30th, 2008  
Today would have been Usagi's birthday. I'm sending some flowers to her mom.

* * *

July 15th, 2008

It's been six weeks since Usagi died, and we haven't heard from Rei. Spoke to Ami and Mako, and told them about how Usa wanted to talk to Rei about her problems, and they are now convinced that Rei was in the fire with Usagi. Oh God, we lost two friends that night.

(…) I don't know how I'm supposed to still function after this, but Setsuna has booked a number of concerts all over Asia to promote... well, to promote me. Will leave for tour tomorrow.

* * *

September 9th, 2008

MUST remember to call Ami tomorrow, it's her birthday. MUST REMEMBER IT!

* * *

September 30th, 2008

Brief break before the tour starts again. I've never been so tired, but it takes me ages to fall asleep at night. I can't stop thinking about Usagi and Rei. Did they die because of me? Did Usa tell Rei that I wanted to have her committed? Did they get in a fight over this? Did they perhaps knock a lamp over in the process? I don't know, I'm overthinking this, but I can't help feeling guilty. Setsuna has given me some sleeping pills, she said pop stars are supposed to be pretty and I was beginning to look like crap. Stupid bitch.

* * *

October 22nd, 2008

Happy birthday to me... Happy birthday to me...

Happy birthday to me... Happy birthday to me... Happy birthday to me...

* * *

November 16th, 2008

Someone offered me a line of blow at a club yesterday night. I accepted. Ami would be so disappointed.

* * *

Dec 6th, 2008

Couldn't make it to Tokyo for Mako's birthday yesterday, but I'm meeting her in ten minutes. We'll have dinner, I bought a number of DVDs we can watch, and then we'll have an actual slumber party. Ami has to work (Boooooo), but Mako and I will have fun. I wonder if she'll like her present?

* * *

December 25th, 2008

I fucking hate Christmas.

* * *

Jan 3rd, 2009

Woke up crying tonight. No idea why.

* * *

Jan 12th, 2009

Another strange dream. There was a tall man in some sort of silver uniform. He seemed familiar, but I'll be damned if I can remember where I know his face from. Perhaps a security guard or a promoter?

* * *

Feb 14th, 2009

Valentine's Day. I'm all alone. Aged 24, and I'm already the lonely cat lady.

* * *

March 6th, 2009

New man. His name is Ace, and he claims that he's an actor. Haven't seen him in a movie, but perhaps he's more of a theatre guy? Oh, who cares. It's not as if I want to keep him around for talking.

* * *

April 17th, 2009  
Rei's birthday. Even though she wouldn't have appreciated the gesture, I'm getting drunk in her honour. I'm trying so hard to remember Rei the way I knew her: elegant, smart, proud. She always said that I don't have to wear short dresses to be successful as a singer, but she never knew how this business worked.

* * *

April 19th, 2009

Ace got us some cocaine tonight. I'm beginning to enjoy it too much, and it doesn't help with the insomnia.

* * *

June 11th, 2009

Paparazzi are getting crazy. One follows me everywhere, snapped me falling flat on my face yesterday and now the pictures are all over the glossies, asking whether I was drunk when I fell. Pff. Stupid press, they have no idea.

* * *

June 17th, 2009

Had to go to the hospital because I collapsed on stage. Setsuna told the reporters that I was suffering from dehydration, but we both know that it's because of the sleeping bills and the blow. I'm loosing myself.

* * *

July 19th, 2009

I KNOW him. I fucking KNOW him. The pap that always follows me around, I have seen his face in one of those strange dreams I keep having. I need to talk to him.

* * *

July 21th, 2009

It was easier than anticipated. I took Ace to the alley behind the record studio, and blew him. The pap was in his car, taking pictures, and I looked him right in the eyes, and that was that. He contacted me an hour ago, his name is Hisaya Nigoshi, and we'll meet tomorrow.

* * *

July 22th, 2009

When Hisaya shook my hand, it felt like a punch in the stomach. These images, they invaded my mind, and for a minute it felt as if I was standing on a battle field rather than my in living room... He had a sword, and his eyes looked so...dead. Dead eyes in a living face.

* * *

July 29th, 2009

Dumped Ace, he was getting a bit too intense for my liking. He kept talking about "finally getting married" and keeping me all to himself. I hope he doesn't talk to the press, it could ruin my career if he told them about the blow.

* * *

August 5th, 2009

Met this really nice guy in a book shop. I don't think he recognised me, and we went for a coffee. His name is Jirou. When I told him that I work in the entertainment industry, he laughed and asked me whether I already have a sex tape out. He's cheeky, but funny, and he doesn't bother sucking up to me. It's so nice to talk to someone who doesn't care about me being a singer. We really clicked.

* * *

August 8th, 2009

I accidentally called Jirou by another name today, good thing he wasn't offended. Btw: name was a really weird one. Jadeite. Never heard that one before, but might be a good title for a song?

* * *

August 17th, 2009

Jirou and I talked, and decided that we're better off just being friends. The sex was fantastic, but there was something wrong. It's as if we like each other too much and in the wrong kind of way for a relationship. I hope we stay in touch, I really like him.

* * *

August 21th, 2009

Jirou called me in the middle of the night, he was drunk as a bucket. He kept calling me Aphrodite, and I don't think he meant it as a compliment. He meant it as a name. The strangest thing is that I kind of like it. I even responded to it when I picked up the phone and the said "Aphrodite". I just said "Yup, that's me, what's going on?". Perhaps that's why he wasn't offended when I called him Jadeite a while ago? Because he responded to it just like I responded to Aphrodite?

The reason for his call (and his drinking, I think) was that he has nightmares. He says that he dreams about battles and bloodshed all the time, and there is always this girl in his dreams. Even though we're no longer dating, it still felt a bit strange that he would tell me about this woman he was dreaming about.

* * *

August 26th, 2009

Jirou told me more about that woman. He was able to describe her down to the eye colour. Purple. It reminded me of Rei, she's the only person I know knew who had purple eyes. I still can't believe that both she and Usagi are gone.

* * *

September 10th, 2009

Sent Ami flowers and a boxed set of Grey's Anatomy for her birthday today. She has off having dinner with her mum now, but we spoke on the phone an hour ago. I have to drive to Radio K-FM now, another interview.

* * *

September 18th, 2009

I think Hisaya was once called Zoisite.

Something about him is a bit terrifying, even though he's actually rather shy and quiet. He smokes a lot, which is disgusting. He was here yesterday, and we talked a bit and had some wine, and smoked one cigarette after the next. He's very restless, but then again, so am I.

* * *

September 30th, 2009

Endymion, Aphrodite, Zoisite, Jadeite. What does all of this mean?

* * *

Oct 22nd, 2009

In London for the press tour. Bored. I don't think they like me here, I'm too J-pop for them. Setsuna said that she doesn't care, we'll run the scheduled interviews and then I have to go Harrod's to open the winter sale. Great. That's precisely how I planned to spend my 25th birthday. My parents haven't called yet, I wonder if they forgot all about it? That bitch Setsuna didn't even congratulate me.

* * *

Oct 23rd, 2009

Got a belated birthday text from both Jirou and Ami. :) :) :)

* * *

Oct 24th, 2009

Dreamt of the man in silver again. In the dream, he was after me, but rather than feeling scared, my dream-self was sad.

* * *

Oct 30th, 2009

Finally back home. Will try to see if Ami and Makoto have time to hang out tomorrow. It's been too long. We have yet to celebrate Ami's upcoming move to the States. She will be a brilliant surgeon, she's so clever. I might get her a diamond bracelet for the occasion, she'd like that. Must remember to ask Mako if she wants to help pick it out.

* * *

Nov 2nd, 2009

Can't reach Mako, even called the café. Her colleagues told me that she had gone on holiday earlier this month, and hasn't reported back. It feels like Rei all over again: this sudden and unexplained disappearance. Something is going on, I know it. Should I call the police?

* * *

Nov 4th, 2009

I feel haunted. I went out to get some curry an hour ago, and I put on a hat, and a big scarf, and wore a wig, so I don't think any fans or paps would have recognised me. But there was this woman that trailed me all the way to the curry place. She didn't follow me in, but when I left, she was following me again. She bought a paper at the newsagent opposite the curry place, but really, who walks six blocks for a paper? She walked behind me all the way until I was home, and it was a bit scary. There was something familiar about the way she walked, but it was dark, and she was just as bundled up as I was. All I could tell is that she had really gaudy red hair. My mother would call it cheap prostitute hair, but then my mother calls everything out of the ordinary cheap.

* * *

Nov 5th, 2009

Called Ace. I need some company because every time I'm alone, I get completely paranoid. Plus, it's easier to fall asleep when there's someone next to you. God, I've sunk so low as to fuck someone I don't care about just to have some company. Shit shit shit.

* * *

Nov 7th, 2009

I'm afraid that I'll be next.

* * *

**Newspaper clipping from The Tokyo Evening Bulletin, dated Nov 9****th****, 2009**

_The body of pop singer Minako Aino was found in her apartment in the early hours of the morning. Police suspect foul play. Aino had recently travelled to the UK to promote her first English record._

_

* * *

_

**End of the Interlude.**_  
_


	14. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

_

* * *

_

Setsuna Meioh was staring out of her window. Mamoru hadn't called again since he had stormed off days ago, and she doubted that she would ever see him again unless it was because of Minako's murder. Remembering the feeling of his hot skin pressed against her own, she cursed and went back to work.

* * *

Staring out at the same darkening sky Setsuna had looked at, Mamoru shook his head. Even after reading Aino's journal, he felt that he had learned almost nothing new. Frustrated, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "Aino didn't know much more than we do."

Jirou snorted. "You know about Zoisite, Jadeite, Endymion and Aphrodite?"

It was then that Noboru fastened his attention on the younger man, taking him in properly for the first time since he had entered the apartment with Katsurou and Mamoru. "You're the one from the picture in the secret drawer."

He looked Jirou up and down, evaluating him before turning to Mamoru, who nodded. "He found a body at the Hikawa shrine."

"Hino is dead?" Noboru immediately asked, his eyes flying over to the coroner who was - of course, Noboru thought - standing right next to Mamoru. "It's impossible to identify her without an autopsy. While the decomposition has been somewhat stalled by her...position, the girl has been dead for at least a year, probably longer," Katsurou offered, discomfort etched into his face. He didn't like making assumptions, he preferred to be 100% certain before he opted to speak. "I'll do her and possibly Nigoshi's autopsy later tonight."

Matter-of-factly, Noboru asked: "Was her heart missing?"

Katsurou nodded. Noboru got up, and began to walk through the room, careful not to step on any of the dark stains on the floor. Hisaya Nigoshi had chosen soft blue carpet for his home, and now it looked a mess. The blood hadn't even dried yet. Eventually, Noboru stopped. An idea was beginning to form in his mind. "Hisaya still had his heart when he died."

Mamoru looked up, surprised. "He did?"

"Yes, but his tongue was cut off."

Jirou closed his eyes, and it was this minimal movement that reminded Katsurou of his presence. The coroner's voice could have frozen the sun. "I believe you had some information you wanted to share with DI Chiba."

Jirou shot the coroner a look that held little love, and a hint of panic. "Nothing that wasn't in the journal. I wanted to explain the nature of my relationship to Minako, and it's something I want to keep private, so I didn't want to make a statement about it at the station."

Katsurou brushed an imaginary speck of dust from his trench. " I seem to recall you saying that you had something to share with DI Chiba and me, specifically. Why would I care about the nature of the relationship you had with the victim?" Something about the question rang a cord in Mamoru, but he was too focused on Jirou to give it further thought. Under the coroner's scrutiny, Jirou Koutani seemed to shrink a little.

"I thought you were Chiba's partner," Jirou answered a little too quickly, and the lie was lingering in the stuffy air.

Katsurou raised an eyebrow. "You have been interviewed by one of his partners: DI Tenoh. Bearing this in mind, shouldn't you have asked her to come along as well?"

Jirou smirked, and it was obvious that he was suddenly on safe footing again. It reminded Noboru eerily of Hisaya Nigoshi and their last meeting in the cold morning after his release from prison. "No, because she was very nice to me, and I plan to ask her out some day, and I highly doubt that she'd let me take her to dinner if she knew about Minako and me."

Noboru actually laughed despite himself, a sound that couldn't be more at odds with Hisaya's blood on the floor. "You want to ask out Haruka Tenoh? She'd cut off your balls and feed them to her cat."

"What can I say, I like danger," Jirou said, and every man in the room could tell that this was nothing but the truth. Mamoru and Noboru exchanged a quick glance. It was time they got the mysterious man out of here. They would get him to talk later.

"Mr. Koutani, you can leave now," Mamoru said briskly. "Katsurou, can you give him a lift? Noboru and I need to go over this diary again." If Katsurou minded finding himself as the designated driver, he didn't show it. "Of course. Come by the morgue after you've finished here," he said, and ushered Jirou out of the room with an inclination of his head.

* * *

Finally, Noboru and Mamoru were alone.

"Did you believe him? When he said that he had nothing more to tell us?" Mamoru asked the second they heard the door click shut.

"No. He knows something, but he wasn't going to share it."

"Why did he want to be alone with us then?"

"No idea. None at all. But let's think about this later because we have something more important to focus on. Does he have an alibi for the murders?"

Mamoru looked blank.

Noboru groaned. "He could be the murderer, Mamoru. Not of Nigoshi, but of the girls."

"You think that it's two perpetrators, acting independently from one another?"

"Serial killers rarely change their M.O. to a degree as significant as this one. The perp takes the hearts as trophies, and Hisaya still had his," Noboru explained, once again pacing through the room. He was careful not to breathe through his nose: the windows were tipped, but the smell of death still clung to the small flat.

"But his tongue was taken," Mamoru countered immediately, a thoughtful expression on his face. "So there was still a part of his body missing, a token was still taken."

Noboru looked down on one of the brownish spots, visibly disgusted. "Mamoru, the perp didn't take it with him. It was lying right in front of Hisaya. It came out of his stomach."

Mamoru was suddenly glad that he hadn't seen this particular crime scene when the body was still there. Noboru gave him a second, and continued. "If I'm not completely mistaken, then Hisaya Nigoshi was either dead or dying when we stopped by to ask him about the notebook last week."

Mamoru remembered standing in front of the door, knocking and hollering. Back then, he had really believed that if they found the red notebook, they would find all the answers they were looking for. And while he had been convinced that the puzzle could be solved, Nigoshi had died. He gulped. "How do we proceed from here?"

Noboru thought about it, his big brown eyes worried. "All of these cabinets are full of paparazzi shots he took, those need to be examined. I'll do that." He gestured to the cabinets lining one wall. Hisaya had been proud of his work, and he had been careful to develop and file all pictures that were worth anything. Noboru had filched through a few of the cabinets while searching for the red notebook. "Haruka can go in and question Ace again before we have to let him go, even though I doubt that he has anything of interest to say. I will check whether Hisaya had any enemies, whether we can dig up a motive for his death that is separate from the Missing Heart Murders."

"And what do I do?" Mamoru's voice was flat, and the fear of being pushed to sidelines against made him feel inept and useless.

"You follow Katsurou's invitation to the autopsy and see what he can tell you about the dead girl. He said she died at least year ago, but that it might be longer. If her point of death was indeed even further in the past, she might be Rei Hino. The diary at least tells us the last time Aino, Mizuno and Kino were in contact with Hino. And then you will dig up everything you can find about this odd fellow you dragged in here. I assume you don't want the Chief to know about him and his connection to Aino?"

Mamoru nodded,his mind reeling. "Not yet." He was sure that Jirou was innocent, he had believed the younger man when he had said so, fully aware that it was an odd thing to do for a policeman. "Can you drop me off at the station? I came with Katsurou, and my car is still at the temple."

Instead of answering, Noboru moved to the door, and stuck his head into the hallway beyond it, quietly talking to the Constable positioned there.

Retreating back into the flat, he turned to Mamoru. "Okay, let's go."

"What did you tell him?" Mamoru asked once they were in the narrow elevator.

"I asked him to go into the apartment and put all the photo folders into boxes and have them taken to our office. I need to go over them at some point, and I don't want to do it in there."

"You seemed quite at ease in the apartment a minute ago," Mamoru said softly, remembering how Noboru had sat on the chair that had (judging from the amount of blood on the carpet around it) been the place of Nigoshi's death. Talk about putting yourself in someone else's shoes.

Noboru grinned, and it was a familiar and soothing sight. "That's called self-control, you idiot."

* * *

Following the coroner through a series of well-lit corridors, Jirou silently cursed his luck.

"Weren't you supposed to take me home?" he finally asked out loud.

Katsurou didn't turn to respond. "Yes, but I don't trust you, so you can watch me conduct the autopsy on the dead girl you found."

"And if I look reasonably shocked throughout and possibly puke on your feet, you'll be convinced of my innocence?"

"Maybe," the coroner answered without inflection and opened the door to the morgue.

"Great," Jirou muttered and followed him through it.

* * *

After looking through what felt like millions of photo folders, Noboru Sanjoin was ready to call it a day. He had opened the first folder hours ago, and ever since then, he had seen picture after picture of celebrities doing mundane things and he was bored out his mind after ten minutes. That had been three hours ago.

The day had been long, and it took a lot of strength to suppress the panic that had clung to him like a wet coat and keep on working. Noboru couldn't quite forgive himself for storming out of the flat when he had seen the disembowelled man on the chair, so he had to work extra hard now. He knew that he owed it to both Nigoshi and himself. So he went to get himself another mug of coffee and got one of the secretaries to fetch him a tuna sandwich. Munching on it, he flicked through yet another folder.

Hisaya Nigoshi had taken many pictures that the celebrities in and around Tokyo must hate. He'd been good at his job, always there when a starlet left the house without undies or when an actor stumbled into a drunken brawl. Of course, there were countless shots of Aino. Aino on her way to her hairdresser's, Aino on her way to the vet, clutching a white cat to her chest, Aino on the red carpet, Aino kissing another girl at a party, Aino with Ace in the alley. Aino and Ace stumbling out of a club, clearly more than just intoxicated. Remembering her diary, Noboru could only feel pity for her. She had been so alone, proving once again that money wasn't everything. Leaning back in his chair and swivelling around once, he wished that he could ask Mamoru to help him, but that just wasn't an option.

The reason why Noboru himself had opted to go through all of these pictures was because he was looking for a very specific face, a face he hoped his colleagues would never have to see. He was sure that Beryl had killed Nigoshi, and he was just as sure that she would show up in the background of one of the pictures. And those pictures would then simply have to disappear.

Back in the apartment, Noboru had made a decision. He would make sure that Mamoru and Haruka would never learn about Beryl and her involvement: he was convinced that the redhead hadn't killed the girls, but there was no doubt in his mind that she had killed Nigoshi and that she had enjoyed every second of the man's suffering. There might be a connection between the two cases, one he had yet to discover. Either way, he knew that Beryl was ruthless: she wouldn't hesitate to kill Mamoru and himself if they became dangerous to her. Or if the mood struck her. No, he himself would take care of Beryl. But before he did that, he needed to know why she had killed Nigoshi.

* * *

When Mamoru walked into the morgue, carefully balancing two mugs of coffee, he found Katsurou staring intently at the naked body of the girl from the temple. Perched on a stool next to the autopsy table was Jirou Koutani, looking completely mortified.

"What's he doing here?" Mamoru asked, jerking his head in the direction of the blond man.

"Proving his character," Katsurou said, and clipped off one of the overgrown nails before sealing it in a small plastic bag. Not sure how to respond to this, Mamoru simply put the mugs on the small desk in the corner, and sat down on the chair in front of it. Katsurou smiled; a true and simple smile that transformed his face. "Is one of those for me?"

"Yeah, I wasn't quite sure how you like it though, so I brought-" At that point, Mamoru began to dig through the pockets of his jacket and finally produced at least three little packs of sugar, and several creams. He grinned, and from his place by the autopsy table, Jirou groaned. "There's a dead girl on the table, and you're bringing sugar?" Katsurou and Mamoru looked at each other, and Mamoru shrugged. He had seen worse. This was nothing compared to how Makoto Kino's body had looked and smelled. Katsurou focused on the corpse again.

Swiftly, he cut off a bit of the black tangled mess that was the dead girl's hair, and put it in a bag as well. Mamoru knew that it would go to the DNA lab, but he also knew that Rei Hino's DNA wasn't in their database.

"Will you have to go by dental records?" he asked, and took a sip of his coffee. It was almost too hot and he sat it down again. Jirou – whose face was ashen by now – gripped the edge of the stool. Unperturbed by the man's distress, Katsurou pried open the dead girl's mouth. "Her tongue wasn't cut out. I can't yet tell whether she died from strangulation or from the wound to her upped body. And since she is almost mummified, I will try the dental records." After a moment in which Mamoru opened the laptop notebook he had carried with him, Jirou shrunk further into himself, and Katsurou got the scalpel ready, the coroner frowned. "Mamoru, Rei Hino was how old again?"

"25. Same age as Usagi would have been."

"Then this isn't her. This girl is no older than 17 or 18."

"Are you sure?"

Katsurou arched an eyebrow. "Are you questioning my judgement?"

"No, no, of course not," Mamoru hurried to say, once again feeling like a seven year-old. "It was a rhetorical question." He turned to face the computer screen, a little more flustered than he liked to be.

Silence settled over the morgue again, until Mamoru heard the familiar but terrifying sound of the rib retractor. He briefly closed his eyes, glad that neither Koutani nor the coroner could observe his unease with the procedure. Opening them again, he began to search their database for missing persons reports. "What's the rough time frame in which she died?" Katsurou (without looking up) answered: "Maximum two years, minimum one." Entering the parameters into the computer, Mamoru began to look for young girls who had been reported missing since then. Identifying the victim had the first of foremost priority now; he couldn't even bear to think about how he would have felt if he never knew whether Usagi was dead or not. Not having been able to bury her was bad enough.

When Katsurou reached inside the corpse to take out what had once been the girl's lungs and put them on a scale, Jirou jumped up and raced out of the room, clutching a hand over his mouth.

Mamoru took the opportunity to scrutinise Katsurou: "You do know that it's as much against the procedure as it gets to take a witness to the morgue and force him to watch the autopsy of a body he found?"

Katsurou's face didn't move, even though Mamoru was quite sure that the coroner was actually amused. What a morbid man. "Who's forcing him? He's free to leave whenever it pleases him, and in fact, he has just done so."

"Why are you doing this?" Mamoru asked, curiosity in his voice.

"It's as good a way to get people to know as any," Katsurou answered and Mamoru wondered what Noboru would make of this attitude. "He works as an electrician for a small company. When nervous, he gets chatty. He likes to go hiking, which is how he said he found the body. He was very interested to find out whether or not the victim was Hino, even though he didn't say so explicitly."

"That's a lot of information."

Katsurou smiled again, and ruined the effect by pulling a long and dark mass out of the corpse. "The state of her bowels suggest that her death was rather two than one year ago."

Meekly, Mamoru nodded and turned to the computer again, ignoring his coffee. The database had offered him a number of missing girls. Quickly, he adjusted the parameters to the new time frame, and found himself with a considerably more limited number of options. One name caught his attention. "Do you know a Dr. Tomoe? The name sounds familiar, but I can't place it. His teen aged daughter went missing 18 months ago."

Katsurou nodded. "He was a genetic researcher. His studies were controversial, but he was certainly gifted. He died in a car accident about a year ago."

"Anything fishy about his death?"

"As far as I remember, he was drunk and crashed his car against a house, killing his girlfriend who was in the car as well." Katsurou answered dryly. "Did you hear that through the rumour mill?" Mamoru enquired while reading through the report. Hotaru Tomoe was the right age, the time of her disappearance seemed to fit, and the small picture on the report showed a girl with black hair. A metallic clink told him that Katsurou had put an instrument down, and he could hear the coroner pull off the rubber gloves soon after.

"No. I had him on this table," Katsurou said simply and walked over to the desk, reaching over Mamoru for the coffee. "Come on, let's go and check where your new friend has disappeared to. I can't have him wandering around down here unsupervised."

* * *

Finally shoving the folders away from him, Noboru got up. His day had started early, and he was beginning to feel the tiredness seeping through his bones, even though he knew that he wouldn't be able to sleep once he found himself in his bed in his lonely apartment. He usually didn't mind living alone, he actually quite liked it, but right now, it was more comforting to know that countless policemen were still working in the offices surrounding his own. They were a security net that separated him from the likes of Beryl, from the danger lurking outside, from the loneliness in his heart.

Shaking this melancholy thought off, he set out to look for Haruka to see what her interview of Ace had unearthed. Moving through the hall, he greeted his colleagues, nodding tersely. He had resolved to deal with the Beryl situation himself, but he was a cop, and not a killer, so he could already feel his conscience darken. Finally, he reached the interview room, only to find it empty. Damn. Ace was already gone. A helpful constable pointed out that Haruka and Ace had just left the room and that she was escorting him to the main entrance as they spoke. Noboru thanked the man, and hurried off. Noboru wanted to check in with Haruka before she left for the day, he had to show her that he was back now, and that the morning's panic attack was over now. After all, he couldn't let the toughest female cop on the force think he was a wimp who couldn't handle the sight of a body.

Thus occupied by his thoughts, he almost ran past Katsurou and Mamoru, who were leaning against the banister and surveying the foyer downstairs. Each held a mug of coffee, and they were watching Haruka give Ace a few more stern words. They couldn't hear the exchange from their position, but Haruka looked grim. Noboru came to stop beside them. "What are you doing here? I thought you were downstairs doing the autopsy?" Noboru asked bluntly. Mamoru had the sense to look embarrassed for a second. "Umm, we're actually looking for Jirou Koutani. He left the morgue to go and puke somewhere, and he shouldn't run around the building without one of us around."

"Wait, why is he still here? I thought McCre-... I thought Katsurou had taken him home," Noboru hastily corrected himself. Before Mamoru got a chance to answer, Ace looked up to notice the three men standing on the gallery. Oddly enough, he looked right past Noboru and himself, and only seemed to really see Katsurou, who in turn was staring at him with a confused look in his eyes. "Everything okay?" Mamoru asked, only to be ignored. Suddenly, comprehension seemed to dawn on both men's faces.

It was Ace who broke into a grin that seemed even more false because he started crying at the same time. They were hysterical tears, tears of a man losing his sanity without even knowing it.

"This time, you didn't get her. You didn't."

Katsurou blanched and tightened his grip on the mug. He seemed taller somehow, more imposing. Authoritative. Seconds turned into minutes, and Ace laughed and cried, and cried and laughed, and Katsurou just stood there, so calm that he might as well have been a statue. In this moment Mamoru finally understood why he had always kept his distance from the coroner: he had no idea what this man was capable of; his detached calmness was too extreme. Right now, it seemed that Katsurou Hanzo was seriously contemplating how to best kill Kaitou Ace in his typically analytical manner and Mamoru was uncomfortably reminded of the sound of the rib retractor echoing off the morgue's walls while Katsurou talked on as if he was doing nothing out of the ordinary. Next to him, Noboru looked just as confused as Mamoru felt. It was Haruka who finally snapped back to her senses, and roughly tried to manoeuvre Ace out of the building. The air seemed to crinkle with electricity, and then Jirou Koutani appeared out of nowhere and put his hand on the coroner's shoulder.

"It wasn't him. Come on, let's go."

And they walked away down the corridor, not looking back once.

"What the fuck was that?" Noboru blurted out.

Mamoru blinked. He had absolutely no idea.

* * *

**End of Chapter Thirteen**


	15. Chapter 14

**Chapter Fourteen**

_

* * *

_

Six thirty, and Mamoru was not the first man in their office. Noboru was already sitting at his desk, head buried in his arms, his whole upper body slumped over open files, and snoring soundly.

Mamoru moved past him, and threw his coat in the corner. This morning, he had actually remembered to put on a scarf. He had gotten up around five after a night of little sleep and watched the news channel for a while. The weather guy had predicted another cold day, the temperatures dipping precariously below the freezing point. Turning on the coffee maker, he had set out and prepared a Thermos for him and Noboru. When he filled the steaming black coffee in the silver bottle, he remembered the embarrassing instances when he had to take on of his wife's Thermos to work with him because he had forgotten his own at a crime scene or in the office. Without fail, all of Usagi's Thermoses had been pink. They had burnt with her in their home, leaving him with nothing but ashes and pain. With these dark thoughts, he had hurried out of his flat, and drove to work, careful of the thick layer of snow and ice coating the still empty streets.

Noboru didn't wake until Mamoru had left and re-entered the office bearing two ugly mugs from their coffee room. Rubbing his hands over his eyes, he groaned. "What time is it?"

Mamoru checked his watch. "6.37. When did you come in?"

"I didn't leave," Noboru said and sniffed his shirt only to wrinkle his nose. He opened one of the drawers of his desk and pulled out some crumpled but clean clothes. He had learned to always keep a set of those in his office after his very first murder case. In his job, you never knew when you got home and when you had to look halfway presentable to talk to the family of a victim. He grabbed the clothes, nodded to Mamoru, and disappeared out of their door. There were a few locker rooms with showers in the basement of the station, and this was where he was headed now.

When he returned ten minutes later, he had showered and changed, feeling more alive already. Rubbing a hand over the stubble on his chin, he remarked "Remind me to bring a razor sometime," and reached for the mug Mamoru offered him. "Thanks."

"Was your night shift at least successful?"

"Only seven folders left, but no, nothing interesting yet," Noboru said truthfully. "When shall we bring in Koutani for questioning?"

Dropping the file of the grand theft auto in one of his drawers, Mamoru smiled. "_We_ can't bring him in."

"Right, right. I'd forgotten about that. But I doubt Koutani will talk unless you're there."

"Then we can't question him here."

"We could take him to Kino's café. Perhaps the setting will make him uneasy enough to give something away. Or one of the waitresses might recognise him."

Mamoru nodded. "Good idea." Opening the laptop computer, he clicked his way to the missing persons report of Hotaru Tomoe. Seeing her name brought back the memories of Katsurou cracking her body open. "Do you think we should ask Hanzo to come with us?"

"They seemed chummy yesterday night."

"Yeah."

"What was up with that?"

Mamoru had spent the better part of his drive to the station what exactly was up with that, but he still had no idea. "Hanzo looked upset."

Noboru snorted. "No, he looked like a statue. Perhaps a statue with angry eyes," he conceded.

"Can you make sense of what Ace was saying?"

"No, I have no idea who the woman is that Katsurou didn't get this time. Do Ace and Hanzo know each other?"

"I don't think so, otherwise he would have been able to identify him in the alley pictures, and I know he saw those."

"What if he just didn't tell you that he knew him?"

Instinctively, Mamoru waved this idea off. "No, I'm sure he would have told me."

"Just like you're sure that Jirou Koutani is not the killer?" Noboru pointed out, looking doubtful under his scruff.

Setting his mouth in a hard line and straightening his back, Mamoru stared at his partner. "Just like you were sure that Nigoshi was just a witness and not a suspect. How's your back these days?"

All colour vanished from Noboru's face, and his eyes clouded over.

Feeling ashamed of himself, Mamoru turned his attention on the computer again.

Around ten, he left their office without comment to attend the daily briefing with the Chief and Haruka, looking even less forward to it than he usually did. Mamoru remained behind, and continued to feel like crap for a while. Finally, he too got up and left the cramped room, his steps leading him down the stairs and into the basement until he found himself facing the heavy steel door of the morgue. After a second's hesitation, he pushed it open and walked in. Katsurou wasn't there.

* * *

The Chief had a stern look on his face. "You've got to give me something. The mayor called me yesterday, and he's not exactly happy that we have a serial killer on the loose."

Haruka examined her nails. "Neither are we, but there's precious little we can do about it."

"Do we have an ID on the girl from the temple?"

Noboru handed the Chief the printed missing persons report of Hotaru Tomoe. "DI Chiba was the first at the scene, so he naturally felt an interest in finding out who the girl is." The Chief was unimpressed. "I'm sure he did, especially seeing how she was killed in almost the same way as his wife's friends."

Surprisingly, Haruka backed his defence of his erstwhile partner. "He found her within hours."

"Are we 100% sure it's her?"

Noboru shook his head. "DNA analysis and dental records still pending."

"Okay, hold off contacting her family."

"She doesn't have any. Her father died in a car crash."

"Mother?"

"During birth."

Straightening his tie, he grumbled, "not sure whether this makes it better or worse," before turning his attention to Haruka. "What about Aino's lover? Any news there?"

"He's crazy, and that's all the news you will ever get about him. He saw Katsurou Hanzo yesterday evening when I escorted him through the foyer after the interview, and he began shrieking and shouting like a madman."

The Chief looked interested. "How did Hanzo react?"

Haruka snorted. "The way he reacts to everything: not at all."

"So Ace is a dead end?"

"Yes."

"Do you have anything?"

Noboru and Haruka exchanged a dark look, for once on the same page. "Not really," Noboru eventually offered. "I'll continue to look into Hisaya Nigoshi's life, I'm sorting through the pictures one by one."

Looking sceptical, the Chief crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Are you sure you're up for it? Your reaction to the body wasn't exactly professional."

"Won't happen again," Noboru said firmly. Beside him, Haruka shifted in her seat, drawing the attention to herself. "I'll take over the Hikawa shrine body, and I'll also double our efforts to find the Hino girl. She's a potential victim, if she's still alive." The Chief nodded, just as Haruka said: "But it would be good if I could keep Chiba on the case as well. It's getting too much work for just Sanjoin and me."

"No," the Chief said immediately. "I'll arrange for some constables that can help you. Chiba is out."

The meeting was at an end, and the two detectives left. Once they were in the hallway, Noboru turned to Haruka.

"Talk about unexpected."

"Contrary to what you may think, I'm a good cop," she answered acidly. "So is Chiba, personal involvement or not. He would be an asset to this investigation, and we need all the help we can get. Five dead women, another one missing, and a tortured man, and we still have nothing. This will not be my first unsolved case," she declared with determination and stalked off, ready to release another batch of pictures to the press and everyone on patrol to find Rei Hino before the killer did.

* * *

When Noboru returned to their office, Mamoru stood leaning against his desk, staring at the large blackboard.

"What did the Chief say?"

Noboru answered with a shrug, a movement that was still a little uncomfortable because of the healing cuts and welts on his back. They had begun to itch like crazy. Even though Mamoru had his back to Noboru, he didn't repeat his question, knowing his partner well enough to guess that the silence meant a negative answer.

"I called Koutani, we're meeting him after he gets off work today. He was eager."

Noboru tugged at his red lumberjack shirt in attend to smooth the wrinkles out. "Who is eager to meet the police?"

Ignoring this, Mamoru picked up a battered notepad. "Let's make a list of things we should ask him about. He sure knows more about the whole Endymion thing, he practically said so in Nigoshi's flat."

"We should ask him why he wanted a look at Aino's diary. You said that he wanted to go buy Aino's place to pick it up before he talked?"

"Yes," Mamoru said. "I didn't even think about it at the time, but it's certainly odd. Even with their relationship and friendship in mind, what business does he have looking at the diary? I doubt Aino let him read it, so it must have been to find out something she'd written in it."

"Then we need to know what precisely it was that he was interested in."

Taking a deep breath, Mamoru voiced a question that had been chewing at him ever since he found out that Koutani had known Aino. "Did he know Usagi, too? What about Rei, Ami, and Makoto?"

Noboru tossed his partner a pen, and Mamoru began to jot the questions down, his handwriting almost illegible.

"Do you think he knew Hisaya?" he asked and Mamoru shook his head. "I don't think he's ever been to his flat."

Noboru shook his head. "Not what I asked."

"Fine, I'll put it on the list."

"Have you told McCreepy when and where we'll meet?"

"He's not here, perhaps he took the morning off."

"Does he seem like the sort of person who takes mornings off?"  
Mamoru shrugged. "Honestly, I have no idea what sort of person he is. Every time I think I figured him out, something changes. For someone so quiet, he's quite unpredictable, you know?"

Mulling the statement over in his head, Noboru eventually nodded. "Yeah, I do."

* * *

The rest of the day passed slowly. None of them had much to do. Mamoru left the office around three to go get them something for a belated lunch, and Noboru took hold of the opportunity to check the last remaining folders. He hit gold when he opened the third one, and quickly took the pictures out, folded them, and shoved them in the back pockets of his jeans. The part of him that had finished police school with the best grade of the whole class winced in protest at the removal of the all important piece of evidence, but he just shoved the sentiment aside. Finally, the pieces were beginning to fall into place and Noboru wondered how he could have been so blind as to not see it from the start. He knew that he should tell Mamoru, owed him the truth, but then he remembered the night when he had found Mamoru high up on the Rainbow bridge. Usagi had just died, and Mamoru had been intent on following his wife into death. Noboru had no idea why he had ended up on the bridge himself, it had been a complete coincidence. He had been driving around without paying attention, yet again unable to sleep. And as he crossed the bridge, he had seen his partner standing on the railing, ready to jump. Perhaps it had been fate that led him there that night, perhaps it was his destiny to protect Mamoru. Clinging to this thought, Noboru put the now empty folder back into the box. No, this was a secret he couldn't share.

When Mamoru returned to the office, dropping some dubious looking sandwiches from the cafeteria on Noboru's desk, his partner was deep in thought.

"Anything happen while I was gone?"

Noboru's look brushed the blackboard with the pictures of the victims once, and then he shook his head.

"No, nothing. But I've given the Koutani thing more thought, and I think you're right. He's not our guy."

"Huh. Where does that revelation come from?"

"Been thinking about it, and it wouldn't make sense."

"Because he's seeking contact with the police? A lot of murderers do that, it's a cat-and-mouse game. Makes them feel more powerful," Mamoru added, even though he was convinced that it didn't apply to Koutani. The younger man was looking for something when he had stumbled over the body in the shrine, and perhaps he had been looking for something when he met Minako in the bookshop, but that didn't necessarily make him a murderer.

"Why are you playing devil's advocate now?" Noboru asked, an annoyed look on his face. "Koutani isn't the one we're looking for."

"We'll talk about after we've interviewed him again, okay?"

Noboru nodded, and pushed the last folders in an empty cardboard box next to his desk. "Sure."

* * *

The café was almost empty. A smiling waitress handed them a menu, and Mamoru and Noboru ordered some coffee and a piece of blueberry cake each. Jirou Koutani hadn't arrived yet. Outside, the sky was a velvety blue, and the streetlights cast small pools of light on the snowy street.

The coffee arrived quickly, and Noboru took a quick survey of the room. He noticed the picture of Makoto Kino behind the bar, carefully framed and hung right next to the calender and work schedule over the till.

"That's a nice idea," he said and nodded in the direction of the framed photograph.

Mamoru - two bites into his cake - made an agreeing sound. "Here, you can have mine, too," Noboru said and pushed the white plate with the cake on it over to Mamoru. Gulping his cake down, Mamoru looked surprised. "You never share food." "I'm not sharing, I'm giving you the whole thing."

The small brass bell over the door jingled, and Jirou Koutani stepped in, once again clad in his red windbreaker. He looked around, spotted the two detectives, and moved over to them, dragging a chair with him rather than sitting next to either Mamoru or Noboru in their booth.

"Hi," he greeted awkwardly, and began to shimmy out of his jacket.

The other two men inclined their heads in greeting.

"So, what did you want to talk about?" Jirou said, cutting right to the chase.

It was Mamoru who answered him, mirroring the blonde man's frankness. "Did you know a woman named Usagi?"

There was no hesitation in Jirou's answer. "No, I didn't. Minako mentioned her once or twice, she died in a fire." Based on the guilelessness of the answer, Mamoru knew that Koutani was either a brilliant liar or simply didn't know that he was talking to the husband of the deceased woman. The waitress reappeared, and took Jirou's order.

They only resumed their conversation when his cup of hot coffee stood in front of him and they were sure not be interrupted again. Noboru took over, his voice smooth and interested. "What is that you hoped to learn from Minako's diary?" Warming his hands against the mug, Jirou sighed, and it was obvious that he was torn between another lie and the truth. "That's complicated, but on a basic level, I was hoping to find information leading me to Minako's murderer. I have to know why she was killed." He fell silent, and none of the detectives hurried him to continue. Jirou carefully lifted the mugs to his lips, only to put it down again.

"Minako was my only friend."

"She was more than a friend," Mamoru corrected, remembering the relevant passages from the diary.

"There's no thing such as being more than a friend," Jirou replied stubbornly, and deep down, Noboru agreed with him.

"Will you find the one who did this to Minako?"

"Yes," Noboru said clearly, and Mamoru realised that his partner wasn't expressing a hope, but making a statement.

"When you do, let me know," Jirou said quietly and his blue eyes met Noboru's brown ones in silent understanding. Noboru knew without the shadow of a doubt that Jirou Koutani would not hesitate to kill Aino's murderer. It might not be solely to avenge the dead singer, but right now, Noboru didn't really care about the man's motives as long as the end result was the right one. And to his surprise, Noboru was fine with that. Prison was too good for someone who burned holes into women.

Mamoru asked the next question, but Jirou didn't shit his focus from Noboru. "Why didn't you want to talk in front of Haruka?"

Jirou met Noboru's eyes. "She wouldn't get it."

"Get what?" Mamoru persisted, but Noboru subtly shook his head. "Did you know the dead man in whose flat you were yesterday? His name was Hisaya Nigoshi, he was a paparazzi following Miss Aino around." There it was, the kind but calm manner that made Noboru so good at talking to bereaved and grief stricken families.

Jirou leaned back in his chair; it made him look younger. "No, not personally. Again, it was someone Minako mentioned occasionally. She did want me to meet him, but she died before we could arrange it."

"Do you know why she wanted the two of you two meet?"

"I have an idea, but it's just a hunch, so I'd rather not talk about it." Noboru smiled; it was warm, inviting, decidedly friendly. "You can't say that to the police." Jirou returned the smile, and actually chuckled. "I can say it to you though."

Feeling that there was an entire conversation going on right over his head, Mamoru blinked. He knew when to not interrupt an interview to satisfy his own curiosity, and he decided to simply ask Noboru later. Excusing himself, he got up, phone in hand, and stepped out of the café into the biting cold. He had the number of the morgue on speed dial, but no-one picked up. Either Katsurou had his arms elbow-deep in Hisaya Nigoshi, or he still hadn't shown up, or he'd already finished for the day, miraculously always having missed Mamoru's calls and his one visit. Or he was avoiding him.

Looking through the café's windows, he could see Jirou talking, and Noboru nodding with a thoughtful, but surprised look on his face. Mamoru was so focused on the two man behind the window that he almost missed the fact that his phone was ringing. Not checking caller ID, he picked it up, sure that it was Katsurou who was calling him back.

"Where have you been?" he asked, wondering where the panic in his voice came from.

"DI Chiba, this is Constable Yokashima. A jogger called the station a minute ago, and he was sure that he had seen Rei Hino in the Juban park. Do you want us to sent some patrol officers over and pick her up?"

Blood began to rush to his head. "No, DI Sanjoin and I are in the area, we'll go over there right now." Slamming the phone shut, he shoved it in his pocket with this left hand while beating against the window with his right. He impatiently gestured to Noboru to come out, and ran over to their car, ready to jump in the driver's seat when he realised that Noboru had the keys. "Fuck, " he cursed and then Noboru was beside him, opened the door and within seconds he was on the passenger seat, Noboru had started the engine, and Jirou had slid in on the back-seat.

"Where?" Noboru asked simply.

"Juban park."

* * *

They arrived at the park, and Mamoru realised that he didn't have to worry about finding Rei Hino in it. He could see the fire from his position, and remembered how Katsurou had told him that the holes had been burnt into the women. The murderer had finally caught up with Rei Hino, he thought, and banged his door open, running towards the light as fast as he could, Noboru on his heels. Hitting the right button on speed dial, he pressed his phone against his ear, and shouted into it the second he heard the operator's voice.

"This is Inspector Chiba, I need an ambulance and fire fighters in the park near the Juban high school!"

He closed the phone and ran on, until they finally reached the girl standing in the centre of a large meadow in the park. It should be snow-covered like the rest of the area, but it wasn't. Not anymore. To his surprise, she was alone. "What... where is he?" he shouted, and turned around, scouting the area for the murderer while making a move towards the burning girl. The fire was on the ground around her, effectively trapping her in its circle. Rei Hino was wearing her miko uniform, and she was crying. Without thinking, Mamoru rushed towards her, but an iron grip held him back just as the flames expanded. It was Noboru. "Don't," he said sharply. "It's too dangerous." "But where is all this fire coming from?" Mamoru asked, panic and incomprehension enveloping his mind. "He must have soiled the area with gasoline. Noboru, we have to do something, or she'll die!"

Suddenly Jirou burst through the bushes, running towards the burning girl as fast as possible, coming to stop inches from the ring of fire.

"DON'T MARS, DON'T!" He was roaring, and yet his voice was breaking. He tried to distract her, sway her, but it seemed that she barely heard a word he said. Only when he reached into the circle of fire to grasp her hand did she look at him.

All she did was laugh, and she didn't even sound human any more. It was the saddest thing Mamoru had ever heard.

The heat was intense, stealing the cool evening air right from their lungs. Mamoru watched her and Jirou in silent despair, still trying to figure out where the fire had suddenly come from and how to save the girl, but Noboru's grasp was unrelenting. A large tree caught fire just then, sending angry red sparks in their direction before crashing down inches from their feet. Noboru dragged Mamoru back just in time. It was a burning barrier that separated them from the event in front of them.

At long last, Rei Hino was still. Her purple eyes were blazing and found Jirou's in what both knew was her last minute in this world. The fire was liking at her red skirt, tracing its way upwards in an unerring path. She would die, she would die tonight.

"Jadeite..."

"Mars!"

"I couldn't let them take you from me again," she whispered against the flames and reached to grip the white top of her miko uniform. Jirou shouted and raged, but the fire seemed to be as solid a wall as brick. He didn't stand a chance. Mamoru didn't even notice that the other person shouting was himself.

When the flames swerved to the side, Mamoru could see that she wasn't gripping her shirt, but reaching deeper and deeper instead until both detectives and Jirou could see the blood and fire on her hands. Noboru's mind flashed to the images of the photos hidden in his back pocket: two women in a familiar, seedy bar, talking to each other. He had been able to identify both on the spot. The one smiling was Beryl, the one vacantly staring into space was Rei Hino.

Finally, Rei Hino cried out once and ripped her own heart from her chest.

And then there was a fountain of fire, and the girl was no more.

* * *

END of Chapter Fourteen


	16. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

_**

* * *

**_

Years later, Mamoru was still unable to explain the motivation behind the murder of Minako Aino, his wife, Ami Mizuno and Makoto Kino.

Noboru disappeared, one day simply no longer there. When Mamoru broke into his flat after three days of worry, he found everything in place, from the dirty laundry on the bathroom floor to the dried ficus in the corner.

Noboru's body was found weeks later, washed ashore on the banks of the Edo. There was a suicide note in his pockets, his messy handwriting in waterproof pen on laminated paper.

_Mamoru, _

_sorry to leave you behind just now, but it had to be done. There is no other way, I thought about it, but there isn't._

_You are more than a friend to me, and if I could save you from what is still to come, I would, mate, I would. But there is nothing I can do other than making it worse, making it quicker. I would lead her to you, and she is more dangerous than the Hino girl ever was. So I leave, and I can't take you with me. That night on the bridge so long ago... you made the right decision. A small part of you didn't want to jump, wanted to live, and I hope you still do. It's just that I don't._

_Take my advice and run, run fast, run hard, and don't look back._

_One day, we will meet again._

_N._

It was Katsurou Mamoru wanted to turn to for help in this darkest hour, not able to carry this burden alone, needing someone with a cold and analytical mind to make sense of it all, but when he stepped down into the pathology for the first time since the missing heart killings, he was met by a new face. Katsurou Hanzo had resigned and moved away, carefully destroying all records that could lead to his whereabouts. Mamoru hoped that the odd but kind man was in a small house somewhere in the wilderness, carving wood and designing desks with the small secret drawers he liked so much. Deep down, Mamoru feared that this was too good to be true.

Kaitou Ace was found with a bullet in his head, one perfect shot right through his left eye. The police suspected suicide. There was no evidence to the contrary, but it was the neatest suicide Mamoru had ever seen.

Mamoru met Setsuna Meioh one more time before they parted ways for good and she left Tokyo for L.A., where she worked as a manager for a Japanese-American actress on the rise to stardom.

Only Jirou Koutani remained in the same place. Mamoru went to visit him often, confiding in him more than once. He wasn't sure if the man was taking in a word he said, but in a sick and twisted way, it was comforting to know that there was one person that would always be there.

In a padded cell in the asylum, Jirou Koutani forever waited for the girl with the violet eyes to return to him.

* * *

**THE END**


End file.
